


The Sharp Knife (of a Short Life)

by taeminuet



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Extremely Dubious Consent, Knives, M/M, Masochism, Mental Instability, Minor Kim Minseok | Xiumin/Huang Zi Tao | Z.Tao, Minor Kim Minseok | Xiumin/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay, Minor Lu Han/Park Chanyeol, Psychological Torture, Sadism, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 09:22:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taeminuet/pseuds/taeminuet
Summary: “I’m Kim Xiumin from District Eleven,” he says, fierce despite his stature.Lu Han’s desire to cut his tongue out disappears as suddenly as it came about. He wants to hear that voice scream his name, beg him to stop, or beg him to kill him, one or the other or both. He wants, he wants. “I’m going to kill him.”In which Lu Han is a weapon who wants nothing more than to cut Xiumin apart.





	The Sharp Knife (of a Short Life)

The thing about District Two is that it’s a weapons district. Maybe they’re not as flashy as District One, maybe they don’t have the clever little brainiacs of District Three, but they are what they are, through and through. District Two is the district that creates weapons. They string bows and fletch arrows, forge metal into blades and fashion chemicals into volatile explosives. They know how to make anything and everything that could possibly make a man bleed.

But of all the weapons they know how to make, the most deadly comes in the shape of a child.

—

Lu Han holds a blade for the first time when he’s five years old. He turns it over and over in his hands, familiarizing himself with the shape of it, running the pads of his fingers over flat and edge alike. It slices into his fingers, blood welling up thick at the tips, and Lu Han stares at them for a very long time.

He doesn’t start crying until his mother comes over and bandages them, and then he recognizes the pain that had bloomed beneath the droplets beading on his skin and starts sniffling. The bandages make it hurt worse, somehow. Or maybe it had just been the distraction of seeing the blood, red and thick and strangely entrancing, that had held his attention until it was covered, gone from sight and mind.

He wants it back.

—

They teach them in school about the history of it all. After the second rebellion, the death of so many children destroyed the faith of so many. And yet nothing changed. After a while, they learned that without a way to keep the Districts in line, there was nothing but chaos.

And so they rebuilt, from the ground up. Without children, the population suffered, and people hurried to fill the gap. But with so many of the survivors being what they were, the population that grew, in time, to fill their place was a country of monsters. So many victors. So many survivors. So many people who were strong and fierce and driven dumb and blind by rage and who passed these qualities along to their children.

The games, reinstated, became a way to try and weed out this population boom. And it was different, they said. No longer were they sending children to their deaths; now it was young adults, because the death of a twenty-something was a tragedy, but nowhere near so much as that of a twelve-year-old.

And now there is more to the games. More important things. To tame the viciousness, the government instituted new rules, a new shape to the same old institution of televised murder. It wasn’t just ages now, but the shape of it. Less frequent, for one: every half-decade rather than an annual decimation. They added a team structure to keep victors from being monsters driven to isolation by paranoia and forced self-sufficiency. Now there were five from every district, and they were told to trust one another. It was impossible to survive alone.

Now it wasn’t just a game of murder after all. There was an intelligence aspect to it all, a trial or test to prove worthiness; no more could someone win by brute strength alone.

It strengthened the population, they said. The balance shifted back. The population became stable.

Now there is peace. There is prosperity.

And still, despite everything, despite the second rebellion and all it brought, there are the games.

—

Lu Han takes up a blade again as soon as he’s allowed. In school, after the history lessons, they tell them that in athletics class that the older students have options — archery, knife throwing, fencing, half a dozen other classes all made to teach them how to become just as fearsome as the tools they use. They all have physical combat lessons three times a week to strengthen them, build them solid. Even people like Lu Han, small and fragile-looking, are pushed into classes.

Lu Han goes for the things that pique his interest. He takes classes in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts, wanting to be strong, but they aren’t his focus by any means. No, the moment he is given the chance, he gravitates instantly to knife throwing because just the thought of getting to play with the knives again makes his hands twitch with want and his mouth go dry with anticipation.

They give him access to the weapons all too quickly, not a single consideration made towards the thought that he might not be ready. It hardly matters; Lu Han is not as weak as some, and he’s been ready for this since he was five years old.

Within weeks his hands are a massacre of scars. He practices his knives with the ends of his fingertips cut to ribbons, dozens of wounds in various depths and states of healing, not caring that the handles of his blades are stained red with his own blood.

As he grows older, years making his body lithe and wiry, he learns to love it, to relish the pain that comes hand in hand with his knives. He sucks on scars and fresh wounds alike, tasting copper on his tongue as he wraps his other hand around his cock.

He comes to the pain of his teeth grinding hard and brutal into his ruined fingers and enjoys the agony that sweeps through him like pleasure.

—

By the time Lu Han is sixteen, he is honed to a fine point, sharp and deadly, and he still has even more to learn. The teachers take the top students in each class and filter them into the other schools, the ones where there is no emphasis on mathematics or languages, only on death, plain and simple.

These are the children who will be trained for the new games, who will win and bring glory to their district. These children will be weapons before they are adults. Lu Han doesn’t have the heart to tell them he’s been a weapon since the moment he was five years old and they handed him his first knife.

They spend entire days in the practice rooms, Lu Han throwing knives over and over, emphasizing things he’s never thought to emphasize. Now they want speed over precision, now they want his aim so perfect that it splits the feathers off of an arrow without harming the wood. Then they want both at once and Lu Han practices until everything aches and he comes at night to the way he twists his hand and the muscles scream in an agony of cramping that he will simply have to power through come morning.

Lu Han thinks that this is everything he’s ever wanted in his entire life.

Some time towards the end of the third month, they bring out one of the top girls in the archery class. She notches her bow and aims the arrow directly between his eyes. The whole thing takes less than a second, a motion so smooth it can only have come from practicing perfection over and over again.

Lu Han’s knife is in her stomach before she can fire.

She lurches with the abruptness of it, unprepared for it, and her arrow goes clattering to the floor. Lu Han grabs it as he approaches her. He takes her own arrow and digs it slowly, steadily into the space between her ribs until he feels flesh ripping, hears her screams like some distant animal, howling and crazed.

He twists the knife in her stomach and puts his mouth right up near her ear.

“Beg me to kill you, and I’ll do it fast,” he whispers.

When her screeching doesn’t stop for her to do as she’s told, he licks along the shell of her ear and twists the arrow deeper, deeper.

Hands pull him off of her, long after she stops screaming, and he catches a glimpse of himself in the row of mirrors at the far end of the practice room. He thinks that he looks shell-shocked, uncertain. He’s anything but, the absolute surety of what he’s just done filling in the spaces between his bones.

He wants  _ more _ . This is what he was made for, and he can feel the craving under his skin like an itch he can’t scratch, a need so deep that he can only reach it by carving deep into his skin.

His trainers label him dangerous, but that does nothing but mean they keep a closer eye on him. They still give him knives, still teach him how to kill. Not that he needs any help. He walks out of lessons each day with people’s blood on his hands and finds that sucking on that gets him off even faster than the familiar press of his teeth.

Eventually, he takes the middleman out, sucking on the knife, not caring that it cuts his mouth, his tongue, gouges a hole in his bottom lip that leaves a small scar on one side. He prefers it even.

He learns that he can bite his lip and drag that scar between his teeth, and it’s years and years before he doesn’t finish a fight with his teeth dug into his lip, looking almost frightened, but really just relishing in the pain as he finds better and better ways to tear people apart.

Lu Han is a weapon so long before they decide he’s ready. They praise him for it, eventually, once they understand more of who he truly is. He is rewarded for his violence, for his ability to kill. They tell him that he will be the one to win.

But they tell him that it has to be the right time, with the right team. They can’t send him with just anyone, or he’ll rip them apart as quickly as he’s ripped apart every opponent who they’ve put near him when he has a blade in his hand.

He understands, vaguely. Until then, he makes quick work of anyone who he doesn’t think is suitable.

—

They give him Chanyeol, in the end, a tall, gangly boy with a blinding grin that Lu Han hates on first sight until Chanyeol pins him to the far wall with arrows long before he reaches him. There’s a grudging respect after that, a mangled attempt at a friendship, mostly from Chanyeol’s side.

But Lu Han learns that when he does well for Chanyeol, he doesn’t get praise; he gets fucked on the sparring mats. He gets Chanyeol prizing Lu Han’s knife from his hand and cutting his own fingers with it, slicking Lu Han’s ass with his blood and letting Lu Han suck on his fingertips while Chanyeol fucks him, so hard and fast it hurts. He gets to scream around Chanyeol’s fingertips and shudder apart in equal measure.

There’s a certain clinginess that he feels after that, a certain obsession with what he knows Chanyeol can give him.

For a while, it’s just the two of them, but boredom encroaches and Lu Han finds himself growing more and more anxious by the day as the games begin to get closer and no one else has been chosen to go with them. He starts ripping open Chanyeol’s shoulders as he gets fucked, demanding that Chanyeol be rougher, crueler, starts asking for more and more to distract himself. They make efforts then, trying to expedite the process of finding what they’re looking for.

The team they send him with, eventually, includes the twins — Taemin and Jongin, a tag-team duo that even Lu Han finds fearsome because he knows he couldn’t kill one without the other coming down on him twice as hard — and a beauty named Sehun that Lu Han has no particular affection for.

He’s a good fighter, in his own way, but he bores Lu Han. Lu Han doesn’t like being bored when he has a knife in his hand, but the boy knows how to use a spear in ways that Lu Han can’t begin to wrap his head around. He wants, when he sees it, in an odd way. A knife on a pole. But then he wouldn’t be as close to the blood, and that wouldn’t be fun at all.

Still, he lets it lie. He has 55 others to tear apart. Or he will, once they get to the Capitol.

For now, he is a weapon, lying in wait until they call his name, along with the others, from the rigged system that two has fashioned to help meet their own needs. Somehow it’s less off-putting than if they volunteer. They were just chosen, the five of them; it was just the luck of the draw.

But they’re going, the five of them. They’re going. It’s time for Lu Han to do what he was made for.

Lu Han is sweet smiles and happy noises as he fucks himself down onto Chanyeol that night on the train, leaving rust red smears along the clean white pillows of the train.

—

The Capitol is beautiful, in its own way. It’s bright, glowing, more so than Lu Han has ever seen.

It bores him to tears.

There’s nothing here for him, nothing at all. There are fancy foods and fancier parties, and so many things to do and say and remember when all he wants is his knife in his hand.

Still, there are 55 people for him to watch, to learn. There’s so many of them, all so different from what he’s accustomed to. Every time he’s ever had an opponent, they’ve been from Two. They’ve been like him, forged from steel and blood.

Now he sees the Ones who treat this like it’s a game, giggling and too happy, only their leader wearing any signs of the stress they’re soon to face. The Threes are smart, but so much softer than even he imagined, and it gets worse from there.

They’re so weak, so fragile. Lu Han plays with his steak knife at dinner and considers jamming into one of their necks just to see the uproar it would cause, but Chanyeol notices and stills his hand under the table. Luhan drags the serrated edge along Chanyeol’s palm in retaliation

Chanyeol hisses, freezing up a little, but he doesn’t let go. “Wait,” he urges Lu Han. “Wait until tonight.”

Lu Han bites his lip bloody. Lu Han knows they’ve sent Chanyeol with him because Chanyeol is “good with him,” able to keep him under control. He’s vicious, after all; he needs to be kept an eye on. But that doesn’t stop the bubble of rage that rises up when Chanyeol ruins his fun.

“I don’t want to fuck you tonight,” he spits, drawing them attention. Mostly it’s just the twins, both of them palming their own knives just in case. Lu Han wants to kill them all, every one of them. He’ll rip them all apart, and be the only one, the murderer of 59 people with their blood on his hands and in his mouth, a weapon forged to destroy anyone and everyone it touches.

Chanyeol presses his mouth near Lu Han’s ear. “I’ll let you cut me up, if you behave.”

Lu Han lets out a nearly incoherent noise of rage, but the offer is too tempting to pass on. He smiles at Chanyeol, sweet with just the right undertone of sharp. It’s very nearly a threat. “I don’t want to fuck you,” he repeats, eyes sweeping down Chanyeol’s body, “but I’ll let you fuck me if I can cut up your cock first.”

There’s so much hesitation there that it’s funny, but later, when Lu Han trails the commandeered steak knife, just hard enough to slice, along the skin of Chanyeol’s dick and lets Chanyeol fuck him hard and dry, just that trail of blood making way, it feels like heaven. It feels so good, and Lu Han is almost calm by the time he comes. He sucks Chanyeol off after, lapping up the blood, fingers digging crescents into Chanyeol’s outer thighs.

It’s easy, nice. Chanyeol pets his head almost gently, and Lu Han growls until Chanyeol tugs on his hair hard enough to make Lu Han scream. His cock twitches with spent interest, and Chanyeol shakes his head. “We’ll be up on stage tomorrow. We need the good Lu Han.”

“The good one?” Lu Han asks, a question in his eyes. It seems like a funny statement to attribute to him.

“Sheathed,” Chanyeol amends, and Lu Han understands with a flicker of interest. He’s a weapon. They need him hidden until the last moment.

Lu Han wants to cut Chanyeol again, not with a knife, but with something harsher, something worse, something inside himself that is forged into pain. “Of course,” he giggles, pulling his head out of Chanyeol’s grip and standing to leave. “Wouldn’t want to give away the game too early. It’s not nearly as fun.”

That’s the wrong word for him, he knows. This isn’t fun for him. Not like the Ones. He doesn’t want to play at murder. He wants to cut and rip and destroy.

The steak knife feels nice against his fingers, and he cuts them to shreds and sucks on them, teeth digging into fresh wounds and making him moan. His blood is iron. He is red steel, tempered and forged, deadly. He is a weapon.

It feels so good. He wants, wants,  _ wants _ .

—

The next day is the stage, but first is the party.

They put all sixty of them in a room for the first time, and now it’s not just casual observation. Now he’s watching them all, his eyes tracing necks, bodies, all but eye fucking each one of them in an attempt to learn the best way to kill them. It draws him attention, but not in the way that bothers him.

A few girls titter at him, and he stares at their chests, making them huff and protest. He doesn’t care. He’s staring right through their perfectly made up tits to the spot between their fourth and fifth rib, imagining sliding a knife between them and hearing the perfect squelch as he digs the tip of a knife around near their heart. Maybe, if he’s careful enough, he can carve it out without hurting it.

He can’t imagine that right now though. He can’t. He needs to be sheathed, just for a little while longer. Maybe, once the games start…

He tears his eyes away, scanning the room some more, tracing weaknesses. That one’s large and imposing, easy enough to take down with throwing knives. He’s too big to dodge adequately, at least. The smaller ones, those will be too weak to fight him off if he gets in close; he can take his time with them, cut them open and see how they tick. The ones more his size, well that’s a tossup.

Some, a few from random districts, are mingling. It’s almost quaint, and Lu Han drags his tongue over the shape of his teeth just to feel, watching a small, mousy Three walk up to the leader of the Ones like he’s not afraid of him. It’s amusing. Lu Han wonders which one of them would be more fun to kill first.

“If they team up, we’re going to have to be careful,” Sehun says from behind him, and Lu Han turns to look at him, smiling sweetly. His eyes travel over his teammate’s face slowly. He wonders if Sehun realizes how much danger he’s in, standing this near to a weapon like Lu Han, but Lu Han is being “good.” He’s sheathed, like Chanyeol asked him to be, just for now.

“If they team up, we can use you as bait,” he says, a giggle on his lips, eyes bright. “The Three’s probably smart enough not to fall for it, but the One looks…”

He pauses, frowns. The One doesn’t look dumb. That’s wrong. He looks… He looks…

Lu Han doesn’t like it. “I want to cut his eyes out,” he announces.

Sehun looks at him for a long minute before slipping away into the mingling contestants. Lu Han blinks after him, smiling absently, but he’s too focused on the thoughts of cutting out the One’s eyes to pretend to think it’s funny anymore.

He’s still following Sehun with his gaze, pushing his thumbs against each of his cut-up fingers, one after another, when he sees the boy for the first time. Lu Han stops abruptly, staring openly, not even trying to suppress the broken noise of want tumbling from his lips.

The boy is beautiful. He makes Lu Han want in the familiar way that he wants the pain to rip him through orgasm, a want so strong that it’s practically a need, and it makes him shake with it, thumbnail digging hard gouges into the injuries from last night like he can dig his own nail in deep enough to find the source of it.

It’s not something that Lu Han is entirely used to, but he can’t stop staring, memorizing features that make him tremble.

The boy has chubby cheeks and a soft-looking smile that he seems only to aim at the sleepy-eyed boy next to him. He’s small, almost adorable, but he’s not shying away from the others the way some of them are. He’s holding himself strong and brave, fingers curled around the hand of the boy, but his grip is white-knuckled and he keeps swallowing, adam’s apple bobbing beneath his skin.

Lu Han’s mouth makes yet another noise without his consent.

“Lu Han?” Jongin asks from behind him, reaching out for him, and Lu Han wrenches away from the touch violently enough that Jongin hesitates and tries, “Do you want me to get Chanyeol?”

Lu Han shakes his head. “I want to cut his fucking hand off,” he breaths, almost reverently. “I want to cut his hand off and hold it like that.”

“Chanyeol,” Jongin calls out, almost casually, but he’s watching Lu Han like he’s waiting for Lu Han to try and do it here.

But no. No. Lu Han is sheathed. Lu Han can wait.

He wants to learn everything about the boy, wants to have him, shaking and bleeding under him, screaming like a wounded animal.

“Channie,” Lu Han breaths when Chanyeol comes close. He allows Chanyeol to wrap his arms around his waist and grinds his ass backward, pushing back into Chanyeol’s cut up dick.

Chanyeol makes a strangled noise near his ear. “Not here, Lu Han. Soon. Whatever you want to do, it’ll be soon.”

“I  _ want _ ,” Lu Han sighs, pretty smile on his lips and eyes shining.

“I know,” Chanyeol says, and then, “Come on. They want to make us look pretty for the sponsors.”

Lu Han blinks at him a few times. “Don’t I already?” he asks, partially because he really wants to know, but mostly because he knows it will annoy Chanyeol.

Chanyeol doesn’t like it when he acts like this, sweet and innocent. Chanyeol knows as well as anyone that it’s not real, but honestly, if he didn’t want Lu Han to do it, he’d stop acting so bothered by it. He knows it just makes Lu Han do it more.

“Lu Han,” Chanyeol says into his ear, firm. They are a semblance of sweetness, and Lu Han is sure that they almost look like a couple. Maybe that’s why Chanyeol hates it, he muses; maybe if Lu Han really was the way he acted sometimes, Chanyeol would have a chance to love him. He knows, in his own way, that Chanyeol already does.

But Lu Han is not built for love. He’s a weapon, not a person. But, he knows full and well, the anger from last night long faded now, every good weapon needs a proper handler, someone to help wield them. If it’s anyone, it should be Chanyeol.

“If they make me pretty, will you fuck my mouth?” he asks, blinking over his shoulder at Chanyeol who sighs and squeezes his waist. Lu Han giggles again, and Chanyeol’s jaw sets as he pulls him off, Taemin and Jongin following like bodyguards. Lu Han wonders if they think he’d murder the stylists if they didn’t.

Maybe he would.

—

There are so many lights here, worse than any other part of One, and they’re all trained on them. Or well, not them, per say. All the competitors, all those soon to be dead, all those soon to be winners. Some of them play it up — Lu Han’s expecting the Ones to, and he’s not disappointed.

Well, maybe a little. The tall one, the leader, is acting far too aloof for how calculating his gaze is, and from backstage, Lu Han remembers his desire to cut out his eyes. It’s a boring thought now, but maybe he’ll still do it anyway when all is said and done.

The Ones leave the stage, and there’s a little bit of a pause, giving them time to filter out and leave down the hallway, passing the Threes who are filing up the hallway to the waiting area. Lu Han and the others make their way to the stage, ushered towards the bright lights. They make Lu Han blink rapidly, instinctively curling in on himself and whining in his throat.

“Sheathed,” Chanyeol breathes in his ear as they settle into place.

Lu Han hums in understanding. His lips are still swollen from Chanyeol’s cock, and he wonders if there’s any blood on the inside of Chanyeol’s leather pants right now from his teeth scraping the scab of last night’s wounds back open. He bites into his lip, teeth digging sharply into his favorite scar, and smiles at the crowd, almost shyly.

“So,” the MC asks in a voice that tells Lu Han that he’s going to ask the same boring questions that they always ask, “District Two is known for its share of winners, but none of you are volunteers. Do you think you have a chance?”

Lu Han stifles giggles, eyes alight while one of the twins — he’s not looking to see which one and doesn’t particularly care either way — steps forward to answer for them. “Well, we’re the weapons district. All of us know how to handle weapons from the time we’re very young. I don’t think any of us saw the need to volunteer for this, but we know how to handle ourselves.”

It’s a perfunctory answer, one that contestants from Two give consistently, year after year. Twos never volunteer, but they all know how to fight.

Don’t take us too seriously — we don’t want to fight if we don’t have to. Don’t underestimate us — we can and will rip you apart.

It’s just reading between the lines.

Lu Han giggles again. He feels like the lights are glinting off of him. Chanyeol’s not going to be happy; Lu Han is doing a poor job of staying sheathed.

His laughter draws the attention of the MC who asks, “And what do you think? Do you think your skill in weapons will give you a leg up here?”

Lu Han’s grin twists a little. It’s closer to the one Chanyeol hates again, soft and sweet with an undercurrent of sharpness like his teeth are little blades of their own. Lu Han feels his fingers twitching at his side and presses them against his thighs. He thinks it makes him look nervous, but mostly he just wants to feel the pain of his fingers pressing into the firmness of his thighs.

“Oh, I have a  _ lot _ of practice for this kind of thing,” he says, and feels Chanyeol step closer to him in warning, but there isn’t a whole lot he can really do on stage. Besides, Lu Han’s knife was confiscated before the party, and no one let him grab anything new and fun to use from the makeup room. Lu Han’s less irritated and more amused; they’re so ridiculous.

The MC seems a little unnerved by him though, switching his questions to Sehun and Chanyeol instead. He seems comforted enough by the fact that Lu Han is standing placidly at Chanyeol’s side.

Lu Han doesn’t care about him anyways. He’s too busy eyeing the first few rows full of the other contestants until he finds the boy he had seen earlier. He stares so hard he thinks that the boy might turn and see, but he’s far too busy whispering to the sleepy-eyed boy again, squeezing his hand and smiling at him.

Luhan feels a burn of bile at the back of his throat. It isn’t  _ fair _ . He wants, more than he’s ever wanted almost anything, and this stupid boy is getting  _ everything. _

Lu Han wants to go out into the crowd and grab the boy. He wants to cut his fucking hands off so he can never touch anyone again like that. He wants to cut his tongue out so he can’t whisper sweet little things that make his companion relax. He wants to ruin him, to cut him to pieces.

Chanyeol pulls him off the stage quickly as soon as the MC is done, and Lu Han realizes too late that he’s been making small keening noises in his throat, too quiet for the mic to pick up on, but not too quiet for Chanyeol to hear and be alarmed. The twins flank him again, steady and familiar, and Lu Han lets out another keening noise, this one edging its way toward a whine.

“I’m going to kill him,” he announces to all of them. It feels nice to say, so he repeats himself, slower, feeling the way the words slide on his tongue. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Who?” Sehun asks from beside him, too curious for his own good, and Lu Han turns on him, tilting his head.

Sehun backs up quickly as Lu Han advances. It’s curious, in a way. Lu Han likes it.

He likes sliding his hand up Sehun’s shoulder when he hits the wall and has nowhere to run, leaving little enough space that he can press into his teammate and feel the nervous flutter of his breathing. He likes it, and only wishes he had a knife to twist into Sehun.

But he doesn’t so he settles for licking the shell of Sehun’s ear and grinding his teeth into the lobe hard enough to earn a strangled squawk of pain. It’s only a few seconds, but he relishes it before Taemin finally tugs him away.

Lu Han releases Sehun without a fight. “Not you,” he answers finally, smiling at Sehun who is staring at him, shaking slightly in horror. After a moment, he winks and turns away, catching at Chanyeol’s hand and nuzzling at his shoulder, tossing back, “I’m a weapon, not a monster, Sehun.”

Chanyeol squeezes his hand tightly as they walk, refusing to let go until they’re in their seats.

—

Chanyeol is being overprotective now. Or maybe just paranoid. He’s settled Lu Han between the twins, their forms making a blockade around Lu Han, and still, he leans forward every few moments to check Lu Han’s face.

But Lu Han doesn’t care about any of this. He’s sheathed, waiting. That little flash of an edge he showed on stage has been tucked away again, sated by Sehun’s stupidity and the words that roll around in Lu Han’s mouth like the most perfect thing he’s ever heard.

He says it to himself, quietly, every few minutes, just to feel it. “I’m going to kill him.”

He’s sure it’s driving Chanyeol mad. The first few times he had seemed almost accepting of it, probably thinking Lu Hun was reacting to whoever was speaking on stage. But after the third, fourth time, after Lu Han whispers it to himself under the masking shrill of female voices and the pitched baritone of the MC, Chanyeol has caught on that Lu Han’s just talking to himself, lost in his own thoughts.

And then Eleven walks on stage, and everything changes all at once. Lu Han rockets up in his seat, straight as an arrow, leaning forward in eager interest that has each of the twins grabbing one of his legs to hold him down if necessary. Lu Han scratches at the back of their hands like a cat, digging his nails in in his excitement and bouncing in his seat like a child.

Oh. Oh. The boy stunning under the lights. Those chubby cheeks seem flushed, but his eyes are hard, determined. He’s standing stock still like he’s forcing himself not to move, but Lu Han can still see the little sway of his body, back and forth, side to side, barely a centimeter either way. He’s  _ gorgeous. _

Luhan whimpers in his throat.

There’s so much going on, so many things he doesn’t care about, going through introduction after introduction, people whose names he doesn’t care about, and Lu Han grinds his teeth. He doesn’t care. He just wants to know about the boy. He doesn’t give a shit about anything else. Even the sleepy-eyed boy, who has earned enough ire that Lu Han should bother, doesn’t deserve his attention, though Lu Han can’t help but sneer at him — Lay, he thinks, the name feeling like ash in his mouth.

The way he tugs on the boy’s sleeve makes Lu Han bite his lip hard enough that he very nearly draws blood. But his eyes focus on the way that just the tiny motion pulls the boy forward, in front, until he’s all Lu Han can see in the entire world.

“I’m Kim Xiumin from District Eleven,” he says, fierce despite his stature.

Lu Han’s desire to cut his tongue out disappears as suddenly as it came about. He wants to hear that voice scream his name, beg him to stop, or beg him to kill him, one or the other or both. He wants, he wants. “I’m going to kill him.”

“That’s right,” Xiumin answers, to a question Lu Han didn’t hear. “I’m not volunteering to play this game because I want to. I’m here to protect someone important. And I will kill  _ anyone _ who tries to threaten him.”

Lu Han wriggles in his seat, face lighting up with almost childish glee. Oh, oh, oh, this boy could be a killer too. Lu Han wants to see that. Wants to see him covered in blood while he screams.

He’s so beautiful. Lu Han wants him. Lu Han wants to kill him.

Chanyeol reaches past Taemin and grabs him tight, looking at him with a look that Lu Han very rarely sees on Chanyeol’s face. Chanyeol is afraid of him in this moment. Not just upset and irritated, the way he usually gets when he realizes that he’s been left to deal with Lu Han by himself. Right now, he’s actually, genuinely afraid, and it sends a kind of proud thrill through Lu Han.

He smiles sweetly, innocently, and Chanyeol’s face is a portrait of discomfort and revulsion.

“Him?” he asks, and Lu Han’s smile grows. He nods slowly, eyes gleaming, and Chanyeol shivers. “Alright,” he says quietly. “We’ll help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” Lu Han says flatly, eyes narrowing, smile fading. It’s probably a bit too loud. One of the Threes nearest them looks at him curiously, and Lu Han ducks his head away to hide the shadow of rage on his face. “I’m going to kill him,” he says quieter. “He’s _ mine _ .”

Chanyeol is quiet for a long minute. “Okay,” he says finally, after what seems like too long. There is something like resignation in his tone, and Lu Han looks at him for a bit before brushing it off. Chanyeol is strange sometimes.

He tries to turn back to the stage, but the Elevens are leaving.

Lu Han sighs like a forlorn lover.

But they have time. They have plenty of time. Tomorrow is the testing, and then the games, and then Lu Han will have all the time in the world.

—

When Chanyeol tries to drag him into bed that night to distract him, Lu Han starts screaming. It’s loud and panicked, and he lashes out at Chanyeol with angry hands. “No!” he cries out. “I don’t want you!”

“Then what do you want?” Chanyeol demands, and Lu Han lifts his hands to Chanyeol’s face and then resents the fact that he has to lift his hands for that. He growls and shoves Chanyeol away, storming to his own room.

They’ve taken his knife. His fingers are still sore, but it’s not enough. He wants more. He wants…

Lu Han sits in his bed and cries so loudly that one of the guards comes up to check on him after a bit, probably afraid he’s done something rash like slit his own wrists, the way some contestants always seem to try and fail to do.

Lu Han thinks it’s stupid. If he had a knife, he wouldn’t be screaming.

—

He gets a 10 in his rankings, and it makes him happy in a way. He knew ahead of time it was what he would get. He won’t pull an 11 or 12, not with his size and stature, not with the way his face looks, but his skill with knives earns him a high enough score for people to be afraid of. He probably could have scored higher if they gave him an actual opponent. Dummies don’t bleed, hold no interest for Lu Han, even when they have knives planted firmly in their chests, throats, and heads, solid shots all in a row.

He gets a 10, the twins get 9s, and Chanyeol earns a 10 as well. Sehun gets an 8, and Lu Han laughs himself half dizzy, lying in the carpet with his face twisted up. The others don’t think it’s funny, but Lu Han likes it. No wonder Sehun is afraid of him.

Xiumin gets a 7.

—

In the arena, the center area is full of weapons, stocked for the bloodbath they want to tempt the contestants into. He can see faces, all around him, looking for their own weapons of choice. Chanyeol’s eyes have found a bow, and he can’t see the others, but there’s a spear for Sehun somewhere near the other side.

There are knives though. Luhan can see them, glinting in the light. There’s a flashier set, better handles, made for hand to hand combat, sitting more towards the middle, but on the outer edge, there are thin steel blades, balanced for throwing. They’re nothing special, but Lu Han recognizes the work of home, recognizes the deadly glint of them that hides in the plain black sheath, fitted to hold six knives.

Lu Han bites into the scar of his lip and smiles, waiting.

He doesn’t even have to run for it. The cannon fire goes off and he stands there a moment, watching as the others begin to rush for the weapons. Within seconds, Chanyeol has a bow in his hands and an arrow through the neck of the person reaching for Lu Han’s knives. He knows, like any good handler, the best way to take care of his weapon.

Lu Han simply walks into the fray and picks up his blades, crooning at them like they’re long-lost children. Within moments, two of them are buried in a girl’s chest, and he smiles as he pries them out, wiping them on her shirt as he looks around him.

His eyes catch on the blood, pooling around a half-dozen bodies already, and he hums a bit, in his element now. There’s a sense of rightness, so perfect that when it gets disturbed by the feeling of someone near him, he’s got his knife against their throat within seconds, eager for more.

But it’s only Chanyeol, and Lu Han can’t kill Chanyeol. He pouts and lets his blade fall, tilting his head at the boy before whining petulantly, “Where  _ is _ he?”

Chanyeol doesn’t have to ask who he means, but he merely shrugs anyways. There’s some catastrophe with the Ones going on, Lu Han can hear it from here, and the lower districts are still fighting over weapons. A boy from Seven rushes toward them, scared, and Chanyeol sends an arrow through his leg, making him scream and fall at their feet, cradling the injured limb.

“Do you want him?” Chanyeol asks.

Lu Han wrinkles his nose at him. Has it ever really been that easy with him? Besides, over past the fallen boy’s head, at the edge of the trees, there’s a familiar shape slinking into them.

Lu Han grins with too many teeth. It’s the sleepy-eyed boy, Xiumin’s friend — Lay.

Ignoring Chanyeol’s questions, he follows the boy, slinking through the battle towards the woods. There’s another boy following in the first’s footsteps, one he doesn’t know or care to recognize, though he figures from the outfit he’s an Eleven as well.

They’re not quite color coordinated, but they may as well be by the cuts and designs of their outfits, what they prioritized. Eleven’s clothes are always lightweight, flexible, but clinging, easy to climb in without snagging. Two’s are more padded, made to protect them in hand-to-hand combat, the sleeves tight around their wrists to keep from getting in the way of their weapons. After all, a Two without their weapon is hardly a Two at all.

Lu Han’s fingers dance over his knives as he walks, strolling lazily after the boys who are all but crashing through the trees. He hears one of them saying something, a loud call of what might be a name, and the crashing stops, like they’ve reached a clearing.

Lu Han starts humming softly to himself as he keeps on. There are cameras on him now, he knows, something to show clips of once the live footage of the bloodbath is done. He doesn’t care. He’s not here to give them a show.

“Jonguppie,” says a soft voice from up ahead, voice shaking. “Jonguppie, I… I don’t think it’s safe here. With me. You can climb. You should get in a tree.”

Lu Han pauses in his song to listen. He hadn’t been paying too much attention back in the Capitol, but he thinks that’s Lay’s voice. He’s proved right because the other certainly isn’t the same boy Xiumin had stood in front of on stage, even if his voice shakes as he replies, “Yeah, but… Xiumin will come for you. If I just stick with you guys…”

Lu Han makes a noise of delight in his throat, too loud, that gets him noticed as he steps through the last of the trees. They whirl to face him, and he glances over them, sneering at Lay before focusing on the boy who’d just been talking. He’s right, it’s one of the other Elevens, one he couldn’t give less of a shit about.

Lu Han frowns. “Deadweight,” he says, shaking his head a bit and thinking of Sehun. “You’ll thank me later.”

He throws a wink at Lay, smiling sweetly, and then plucks out two knives, throwing the first hard and sharp. It buries itself in the Eleven’s shoulder, making him cry out and stumble back against a tree, yelling out a frightened, “Xiumin!”

Lu Han laughs at that, hoping that the screams draw Xiumin in, but he has time to spare for now. He levels the other knife and throws it hard, sinking it through muscle with a satisfying sound of metal hitting wood. He steps forward then, ignoring the soft, sweet cry of Lay behind him, gasping, “Jonguppie!”

He wraps his hand around the handle of the first knife and twists, in and back, and there. There. The Eleven, Jongup, starts properly screaming, shaking as Lu Han drives the knife deeper and deeper until it comes out the other side and finds its home in the bark. It makes him all but vibrate with delight, and he grabs the other knife as well and twists, leaning in, all his weight centered on the two blades pressed through the boy’s shoulders.

He smiles at him and leans up and into the boy’s space, kissing him on the cheek. He tastes like tears, but he’s stopped screaming, and after a moment even his breath stutters out in Lu Han’s ear.

Lu Han peels back with a sigh and turns to Lay. “Now then,” he says, smiling, “about you…”

“Please don’t,” Lay whispers. “Please, I don’t want to fight anyone.”

Lu Han blinks. “Fight?” he asks, tilting his head curiously to one side. “I don’t want to fight you. I just want to kill you.”

There’s a moment, a pause, and then the Lay backpedals roughly, letting out a frightened noise. Lu Han is so much faster though, years of training teaching him to react on instinct, and he grabs Lay, twisting him around in his arms and trapping one arm behind his back. With his other hand, he digs out another knife, twirling it up, the edge of it pressing lightly against his softness of the skin beneath the Lay’s jaw.

Lu Han smiles, petting the flat of the knife across the thin skin. “It’s okay if you don’t want to fight,” he says, admiring the thin, white lines that he’s scratching into the slim column of the boy’s throat. “This is prettier.”

“P-please,” the boy stutters, and Lu Han pouts. He’s talking so much, not screaming, and Lu Han wants to change that, but something in him won’t let him, trying to prioritize. There’s something…

But Lay is still talking over him, whimpering out another plea of “please don’t,” that drowns out the niggling thought at the back of Lu Han’s mind.

“Shut  _ up _ !” Lu Han spits, frustrated by losing his train of thought, even if it had never been quite on track. But he’s angry about it anyway, and he twists Lay’s arm spitefully until he hears the satisfying snap and subsequent scream that makes his anger twist into pleasure low in his belly. His fingers tighten on the knife, pressing in until he can feel those first droplets, that very first puncture of skin splitting like cloth. He sighs happily. “See? Prettier.”

Lay sobs, but beyond that, past that, there is a voice, and Lu Han snaps his head up at the approaching voice that cries out a frightened, “ _ Yixing _ !”

Lu Han blinks for a moment, and then the world shudders back into focus. He keens, delighted. It’s him. It’s Xiumin. His voice makes goosebumps rise up along Lu Han’s skin, a shiver rolling up his spine.

But there’s something wrong too, something irritating beneath all of that.

“Yixing?” he asks Lay, easing up on the knife a bit so that the boy can talk without Lu Han accidentally slitting his throat. It wouldn’t do for it to be an accident. “Is he screaming for you? That’s not very nice of him. He’s going to be screaming for me soon. I don’t like him wasting his voice on you.”

“I-I,” Lay stutters in his arms, stuttering over nothing but fear and his own tongue.

Then there’s a crash and Lu Han’s favorite new person rushes into the clearing blindly. Lu Han lights up like it’s Christmas, purring in delight as he takes in the flushed tone of Xiumin’s cheeks, the way his hair is messed up and the way his skin is slightly damp with sweat from running.

He was gorgeous on stage, but Lu Han literally feels like he can’t catch his breath when he sees him like this. His chest is heaving, his wet, wild eyes catching on the body Lu Han pinned up against the tree. It’s stunning, the way Lu Han can practically see the adrenaline simmering beneath Xiumin’s skin, and the world narrows down to practically nothing as he stares.

“Oh,” he breathes, and it catches Xiumin’s attention enough that he spins towards them frantically, wild eyes going somehow even more frantic.

In Lu Han’s hold, Lay sobs roughly. “Xiumin, run!”

Lu Han bites back the frustrated whine at that. He just found him. He doesn’t want to spend all day hunting the boy down all over again. He shifts a little, sorely tempted to let go of Lay if Xiumin tries to flee, but Lu Han’s fears are unfounded.

Xiumin doesn’t retreat. He steps forward instead, face set.

Lu Han relaxes, fingers readjusting on the hilt of his knife and body leaning forward. He smiles at Xiumin, lips parting in a grin that he feels all the way down to the core of him.

Lay whimpers. “Gege, please.”

Lu Han hadn’t grown up speaking the language of his mother’s homeland, but he knows enough to know what this means. It’s almost sickeningly sweet — Lay, trembling in Lu Han’s arms, calling out ‘brother’.

It’s almost cute. Almost. But he remembers the whispers between them at the Capitol, can see the way Xiumin is looking at Lay now. Mostly it’s just irritating.

“Let him go,” Xiumin demands, voice cold. “Let him go and I won’t kill you.”

It’s supposed to be a threat, but Lu Han very nearly moans at the thought. He wants him to try. He wonders if it would feel better for Xiumin to cut him than it feels for Lu Han to do it himself. Maybe it would be prettier. Lu Han wants him to try so badly it’s a physical need.

“Oh, that’s adorable,” he sighs, and he sounds infatuated, even to his own ears.

“7s are so cute,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, remembering the scores. If Sehun, at an 8, is scared of him, Xiumin should be terrified. But he’s not. Lu Han will fix that, sooner or later. “They’re just good enough that they think that they have a chance, and not nearly good enough to back it up.”

The snarl on Xiumin’s face is heaven. Lu Han smiles adoringly, wanting to just go to him now, but there’s still the matter of Lay, and that’s an annoyance Lu Han doesn’t really feel like dealing with much longer. He turns his attentions to the obstacle in his arms.

“And this one… you really didn’t deserve your score, did you, sweetheart?” he coos, more mockingly than he meant to. It’s not his fault he hates Lay.

Still, he’ll be dead soon. The thought makes him smile, tapping the knife against Lay’s throat lazily.

“Better I do this now than let them realize that, because they’ll hunt you down like dogs to prove they can kill someone who got a 9,” he says, thinking of what the flashy Ones would probably do to this boy, what a Three might do to prove their point that they aren’t weak. But no, Xiumin is Lu Han’s, which means that, in a way, this boy is his as well. He sighs. It’s not like he needs to kill a 9, but he might as well. “Weakest one I ever saw, but…”

“Don’t, please don’t,” Lay sobs in his arms.

Lu Han almost startles. He had forgotten, in a way, that Lay could do this. Could beg for his life.

Or… no, that isn’t what he’s doing at all. Xiumin had stepped forward again, and Lay isn’t begging for his life. He’s asking Xiumin to stop, trying to get him to run away, staring starry-eyed and pleading at Xiumin like he has any right to try and take him away from Lu Han.

Lu Han nearly hisses. That won’t do at all. Lu Han doesn’t want Xiumin to run. He wants to rip him to shreds.

Though… oh.  _ Oh. _

Lu Han pauses a moment, the anger dissipating under new, unconsidered ideas. How much better would it be? How much worse would Xiumin scream if he made him fight for it first? Would Xiumin cry and beg without his precious ‘brother’ there? Would he sob and ask Lu Han to kill him? Or would he fight back? Would he hurt Lu Han just to hurt him? Oh, Lu Han wants to know. It would be so… so…

“Cute,” he decides, choosing his course of action, and then pulls the blade across Lay’s throat and steps away, giggling to himself happily. He smiles at Xiumin, excited to do this right now.

“Have fun,” he says, watching Xiumin stumble a little towards Lay as Lu Han moves away from his body, slipping into the trees with a lingering promise of, “I’ll be back for you later.”

He shouldn’t stay, but he can’t help himself. He leans against a nearby tree and drags his bloody knife across his fingertips before jamming them in his mouth. They’re coppery and wet, Yixing’s blood and that other boy’s, and underneath that, his own. He digs his teeth into the line of pain, muffling his own keening noises as he listens to Xiumin whisper sweet, sad things to Lay until there’s no reason to anymore.

Xiumin’s sob makes him moan softly and Lu Han sucks harder on his fingers. It would probably be inappropriate to jack himself off to that sound right now. Chanyeol would frown at him, at least.

Lu Han sighs, feeling put upon, and slips away into the trees to find Chanyeol, humming softly to himself under his breath.

—

Chanyeol’s angry with him.

Lu Han doesn’t know why exactly. It’s not like he did anything wrong. It’s not like he had rules about what he could and couldn’t do. He’s supposed to kill people in here, supposed to murder 55 others or, at least, however many of them haven’t died at other people’s hands.

But Chanyeol is nearly shaking with anger when Lu Han finds him, waiting around near the center of the arena with Taemin and Jongin picking through the remnants of the treasure trove there.

“You son of a—“ Chanyeol says, prowling towards him, and Lu Han frowns at him in consternation. Chanyeol grabs his arm, turning him slowly, examining. “You don’t take off without us,” he says, voice tight. “We had no idea where you fucking went. For all we knew, you could have been on a murder spree through the woods or getting your ass handed to you and bleeding out on the floor. We couldn’t have found you.”

Lu Han glowers at him, hurt. “I don’t lose,” he snaps.

Nevermind that once upon a time, he had technically lost to Chanyeol. But they both know good and well that if he’d been allowed, Lu Han would have ripped the arrow from his own skin and gone rooting around in Chanyeol’s organs. He hadn’t, but that’s because Chanyeol is Chanyeol, and Chanyeol is special, and Chanyeol lets Lu Han ride him with his dick cut up, so who really won there?

“I was having fun,” he pouts at Chanyeol, or tries. He’s grinning brightly now, the memory making him happy, and he keeps smiling even as Chanyeol grabs up his hand and frowns at the cuts on his fingers.

“You have to stop this until after the games,” he tells Lu Han. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself when we need you at your best. What happens if you go too far and can’t throw correctly?”

“He did that to himself?” Sehun asks, appearing from somewhere behind them. His voice sounds disapproving, almost scornful, and it makes Lu Han’s blood boil. He turns on Sehun with a snarl on his lips.

Chanyeol is allowed to help him, has earned the right to handle Lu Han as a weapon, earned it with blood and pain and come. Sehun is nowhere near that level, and Lu Han hasn’t killed him yet because he’s not a monster, but anyone who doesn’t know better than to not fuck around with weaponry they can’t handle deserves to cut themselves deep.

Lu Han’s fingers are around the hilt of a knife, pressing blood onto its smooth black surface, before Sehun can even start to move. He has it out and poised to throw before Chanyeol grabs his wrist to still him, shaking his head. “Not him, Lu Han.”

Lu Han lets out an incoherent sound of rage, face twisting up ugly, and struggles his wrist out of Chanyeol’s hold. “I wasn’t gonna kill him,” Lu Han snaps. “I was just gonna cut his pretty face until he screamed.”

Sehun makes a strangled noise, and Chanyeol glares at him instead of Lu Han, even though it’s Lu Han’s hands that he’s taking, pushing the knife out from between his fingers and forcing him to return it to its sheath on his belt. He’s missing a few of his knives, Lu Han realizes with a pout. He’d left them in that Eleven’s shoulders. Maybe Xiumin will take them, and have to think about Lu Han every time he uses them. It’s nice to know that Xiumin will be thinking about him.

“Lu Han,” Chanyeol says, voice soft and coaxing in the way it gets, “we’re here. You’re not…” he pauses, trying to recall the analogy that Lu Han remembers all too well, oh so easily, and then slowly tries, “you’re not sheathed anymore. You can hurt  _ almost _ anyone you want to. Stop hurting yourself. You don’t need to right now.”

Lu Han blinks. How does hurting Sehun— oh, but Chanyeol’s still more worried about his hands. Right. Lu Han is more important than Sehun. It makes him feel smug, and even if he isn’t angry anymore, all remnants of it wiped out by thoughts of Xiumin, it’s still pleasant to know that even if Lu Han did actually cut Sehun’s face off, Chanyeol would probably still worry more about tiny cuts on Lu Han’s fingers.

“Lu Han, do you hear me? Stop this,” Chanyeol says, being a little too rough as he motions without letting go of Lu Han’s hand, and Lu Han whimpers. Chanyeol stares at him for a minute and then lets go. “We need you at your best more than you need to get off.”

“I wasn’t!” Lu Han protests, jaw clenching. “He looked so pretty. He was so angry I made his friend bleed. I just wanted to taste that with me.”

Chanyeol stares at him for a minute, examining his face, and then sighs. “You found him then? Your… whatever? He’s dead?”

“No,” Lu Han says, scowling irritably. He’d decided to wait. Chanyeol should know — oh, but Chanyeol wouldn’t. Lu Han’s face brightens, irritation falling away as he smiles at his friend, eager to explain now, eager to babble about Xiumin.

“I’m going to let him fall apart. I killed his sleepy little friend, and he was so angry and it was so…” Lu Han sighs like a man in love. “He’s going to tear himself apart over it until he’s begging me to kill him. It’s going to be so beautiful. I’m going to make him scream for me. I’m going to make him cry for me. God, I want him.”

Chanyeol is staring at him. Or maybe he’s staring through him. Mostly he looks a little off guard. “So he’s not dead?”

Lu Han sighs and shoves Chanyeol off. “No,” he says, a little hurt that Chanyeol isn’t paying attention to what he’s trying to tell him. “Fuck you.”

“Lu Han. You had him in front of you, and you left him alive,” Chanyeol says more slowly, like he’s spelling it out for a small child. He makes no move to touch Lu Han again, just staring at him as he asks, “Lu Han, what are you doing with him?”

“I just  _ told _ you,” he says, voice almost a petulant whine. “Why do you care? It’s not going to mess anything up. I’m still going to kill all of them.”

“You can’t do that if you tear yourself up first,” Chanyeol says, finally reaching out for Lu Han’s hand again. Lu Han jerks his hand away before Chanyeol can touch him, making the boy frown. “Lu Han, please…”

“But I need it,” he whimpers, digging his fingertips into his palms, the twin pains of his nails gouging into his palm and the pressure on the cut up pads of his fingers making him exhale. “Channie, I need it.”

“God, you’re fucked up,” Chanyeol says, pulling Lu Han into his hold before Lu Han can fight him. “Go pick out some more weapons. We’ll get going.”

Lu Han doesn’t struggle against his hold, not for a long moment, just digs his fingers hard into the curve of Chanyeol’s hips through his clothes, causing them equal pains. Then he smiles, sweet and sharp. “How many more of them do I get to kill?”

“As many as you want,” Chanyeol tells him, petting his head. “There’s about three dozen left besides us.”

Lu Han sucks in air. “Oh,” he exhales, half a moan. “Oh yes.”

Chanyeol finally relaxes, pushing him past a frowning Sehun towards the supplies where the twins extend blades to him in invitation, giving him his pick of weapons.

—

Lu Han has all kinds of knives now. They gave him whatever he wanted, gave him the pretty knives from the center that are literally everything he could want, a gorgeous assortment of hunting knives and fishhook knives and needlepoint blades, some serrated and some pointed and most with a slim, sleek edge that he wants to drag over his own skin later when Chanyeol’s not watching.

They’re beautiful, and Chanyeol lets him practice using them on the first group they find until he’s perched on top of a screaming Four, chewing absently on his scarred lip and drawing patterns across her skin to figure out which knife is the prettiest. The serrated ones tear holes in her that make her gurgle and shriek, and the flatter blades peel back her skin like cutting supple leather, and she screams like a banshee under him, so high pitched he reels a bit and has to struggle not to clap his hands over his ears in pain. He groans softly to himself and pushes his least favorite of the knives up under her ribs, jamming it in and leaving it there while he shoves himself off of her.

“She was annoying,” he says, rubbing over his own skin unhappily. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like hearing her scream like that, so irritated by her voice that he didn’t even make her ask to be killed before he did it.

Nearby, Taemin and Jongin are lounging near the limp body of a Seven, and Chanyeol is trying to prize an arrow from the gut of an Eight, the tip so embedded in the corpse that he’s cursing at it under his breath in annoyance as he tries to get it free without breaking his arrow.

Sehun is standing guard, cleaning the remnants of blood off his spear. He turns to frown at Lu Han. “What’s wrong with you?” He enunciates it in all the wrong ways, accusing and scornful and mocking.

Lu Han stares at him for a long moment before shrugging. “She was annoying,” he repeats. “I didn’t like her. She’s dead now.”

Sehun scoffs. “You certainly took your time with her for not liking her.”

Lu Han tilts his head. “I wanted to find out which of the knives I like best,” he says, speaking slowly like Sehun’s an idiot. When Sehun bristles, Lu Han smiles sweetly. “Unless you’d like me to practice on you.”

“You’re not allowed,” Sehun says, clenching his jaw.

Lu Han steps closer, fingers coming up, one hand curling around Sehun’s wrist. Sehun shivers and hefts his spear a little, a clear threat, but Lu Han only leans into him, smiling just the way he did in the hallway a few days ago.

“Who says? Who’s going to care if you come back with a couple more scars?” he whispers, blinking up at him. “You might even like it. I do.”

Sehun shivers. “You’re fucked up,” he spits, and Lu Han doesn’t particularly care, but within seconds there are identical hands clamped down on his shoulders, the twins pulling him away and Chanyeol steps into his place with a pinched look on his face.

“Don’t,” he says quietly, looking over Sehun. “He’s fine. He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to do.”

“He’s cutting people apart for shits and giggles,” Sehun protests, pulling away from Chanyeol. “You don’t think he’s fucked up?”

“I think you’re not allowed to say that about him when you don’t know,” Chanyeol says, voice quieting further. “He’s doing the best he can.”

“You called him the same—“ Sehun says, raising his voice.

Chanyeol jerks his head and cuts him off. “I’m allowed to. I’ve been his handler since I was old enough to get into training with him. I know what he’s like. You don’t.”

“Then keep him in fucking line!” Sehun snaps, lifting a hand and pushing Chanyeol back, and suddenly the world is a narrow pinprick of Chanyeol being shoved.

Lu Han lets out an incoherent noise of rage at that, breathing coming quick as he struggles against the twins’ grip, startlingly firm for how small their hands are. “ _ Get off him! _ ” Lu Han shouts, threats bubbling out of him like he’s rabid, foaming at the mouth with promises of agony. “Don’t you touch him! I’ll rip you apart. I’ll cut your face so many ways no one’s even sure which holes started out being used for something. I’ll cut all the flesh off you piece by piece!”

It’s loud, clattering, and Lu Han doesn’t care that the twins are trying to quiet him. All he cares about is that Sehun touched Chanyeol, pushed him, hurt Chanyeol, hurt his handler, and a weapon is made to defend its handler. Lu Han is a weapon, a weapon of District Two, but Chanyeol is his handler. Chanyeol takes care of him, and Lu Han isn’t going to let anything hurt Chanyeol.

He leaps forward, against the solid hold of the twins, and is dragged back, nearly dislocating his joints as he fights. It hurts, but he doesn’t care. Since when has he ever cared if it hurt?

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” he screeches, eyes fixated on Sehun. “I’ll cut off your eyelids so you have to watch what I do to the rest of you!”

“Lu Han, calm down. Calm down, Lu Han,” Chanyeol says, trying to move towards him, but Lu Han is lashing out wildly now, and it’s not his fault if he cuts his handler in a frenzy.

“I think,” Jongin says finally, voice careful as he stares at Sehun, “you should leave now. Lu Han’s going to tear you apart if we let go of him.”

Sehun balks. “I’m not going to leave because he’s insane!” he protests. “I’m not just going to—“

But the looks all three of them are giving him seem to mean something to Sehun, probably more than Lu Han’s own continued screeching, threats toppling off his tongue one after another.

Sehun looks at them for a long time and then spits, “I hope you all fucking die. I hope Lu Han cuts you to ribbons in your sleep.”

He turns and disappears into the trees and Lu Han thrashes after him, enraged. “You can’t let him go! He hurt Channie! I have to do my job! I have to kill him!”

The twins don’t let go of him for a long time, not until it sends Lu Han spilling onto the ground, shaking and twisting, trying to get back to his feet and finding himself disoriented and afraid. Soft hands scoop him up and Lu Han lashes out violently, a knife connecting with skin, and he hacks at it gleefully until he realizes that whoever it is is making no sounds.

He looks up, trembling, and sees Chanyeol attached to a brutalized arm and lets out an incoherent wail, tossing himself forward and forcing Chanyeol to catch him, hurt arm or not. He shudders there. “He hurt you. He hurt you. I need to kill him.”

“Shh,” Chanyeol soothes, smoothing a bloody palm down Lu Han’s back. “Later. You’re not a weapon made for defense. You’re made for attack. We’ll attack later.”

Lu Han whimpers at that, pulling back to blink up at Chanyeol uncertainly. “Later?” he repeats, and Chanyeol nods and pats his head.

Behind him, the twins are murmuring between themselves, half sentences and broken twin language, but Lu Han is trying to find his own balance, trying to get steady again in Chanyeol’s hands. Chanyeol squeezes him and whispers, “Bandage me up, and I’ll find somewhere to cut you that doesn’t cause problems with your fighting skills.”

Lu Han moans gratefully in his arms.

—

The thing about District Two is that it’s a weapons district. Maybe they’re not as flashy as District One, maybe they don’t have the clever little brainiacs of District Three, but they are what they are, through and through. District Two is the district that creates weapons. They string bows and fletch arrows, forge metal into blades and fashion chemicals into volatile explosives. They know how to make anything and everything that could possibly make a man bleed.

But of every weapon they know how to make, the most deadly come in the shape of children created to be weapons.

It’s still experimental mostly, an idea created about two decades ago, and it’s still pitched loosely as a new form of warfare. After all, why teach people to fight if it could be bred into them, genes tweaked and modified in just the right ways to give them the specific traits that the Capitol had tried so hard to breed out of the general populace: bloodthirsty, clever, sadistic. Why not just create the perfect weapon before they were even born, create someone that would fight simply for the thrill of fighting?

Of course, even the most avid of supporters were well aware that making someone with those traits was the fastest way to create a serial killer, someone untamable and wild. There would have to be other traits cultivated as well: loyal, insecure, codependent. Traits that meant that whoever took care of them and offered them praise, offered them rewards for their brutality, they would attach themselves to. Any time there was a weapon created, the concept was, there was also someone taught to deal with them; they would have a consistent keeper, a handler, someone to keep them in line.

So District Two spent years developing human weapons, people that weren’t quite normal humans, people that were just a shade off. And when the development was done and it was time to move to human trials, the first subject was a woman named Lu Xian and her unborn son.

—

Despite what Lu Han has planned, he doesn’t get to follow through in the way he would like. Most of those remaining have formed small packs, the way the Twos had from the beginning. That’s fine for the most part — the four of them can easily take down a group their own size without any of them coming out even slightly the worse for wear. But the problems arise when they’ve taken out everyone they can possibly find and are not even coming across people anymore.

It makes Lu Han antsy, squirmy, especially when the twins go out for a scouting mission, leaving Chanyeol to try to sate Lu Han’s twitchiness, and return with news that there’s a small camp forming, almost a dozen people now. At that size, they don’t dare go after them without careful planning, not and risk losing one of their own.

Lu Han immediately starts complaining, clawing at Chanyeol’s arms with his fingernails when Chanyeol tries to calm him. “You told me I could kill as many as I wanted!” Lu Han snarls, fingers curved like claws. His knives are nearby, and he knows Chanyeol might listen if he grabbed them, but his fingers are already tugging on scabs from past violence, and he satisfies himself with pulling them open with his fingernails in punishment for Chanyeol lying to him. “I want to kill them! I’m supposed to kill them!”

“Fuck,” Chanyeol hisses, tugging his arm slightly, moving it away from Lu Han’s hands, but he still holds Lu Han fast, trying to soothe him with whispers of, “you need to wait. Like you’re waiting for your Eleven. Wait to kill them too, okay?”

“Xiumin,” Lu Han says, frowning at him and then remembers that he’s upset. “It’s not the same! I’m waiting for him to fall apart. This stupid little camp isn’t doing that. They’re just getting closer to figuring out how to get out! I’m supposed to kill them before they can!”

“Not with that many they aren’t,” Jongin comments, and it genuinely startles both Chanyeol and Lu Han enough that they practically freeze, Lu Han’s head snapping around to stare at the younger twin. The boy stares back at him and then shrugs. “Five people get out. You put together a bunch of people from different districts with different motivations? None of them are getting out. Even if they figure out how, they’ll never coordinate it properly. Why help someone if they’re getting the reward?”

Lu Han blinks and then tilts his head thoughtfully. When he pulls away from Chanyeol this time, Chanyeol lets him go warily, watching as Lu Han scrambles across to plop himself in Jongin’s lap. Taemin tenses violently nearby, hand sliding down to his own knife, just in case, but Lu Han merely beams and kisses Jongin’s cheek gratefully.

“I like you,” Lu Han says, patting his cheek, leaving a little bit of blood there from where his fingers had torn up Chanyeol’s arm again. He debates licking it off, but Jongin wipes it away before he can, making Lu Han pout and push himself back off Jongin’s lap in disappointment. Taemin’s shoulders relax, and Lu Han beams at him and giggles before turning to Chanyeol again.

“If I can’t kill them, I want to go see Xiumin,” he says. “I want to go see him. I want to see if he’s aching for me to kill him yet.”

Chanyeol sighs. “Fine,” he relents, probably more because he’s struggling to rebandage his arms than because he cares that Lu Han’s upset. “We’ll go find Xiumin.”

Lu Han frowns. “No!” he says, eyes narrowing and face twisting. “No! He’s mine! I want to go see him. Just me!”

“You’re not going by yourself,” Chanyeol says fiercely, standing. “You’re not going off by yourself where none of us can find you if something happens.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Lu Han snarls. “I don’t lose!” he says, angrily. “Nothing’s going to happen! I was made for this! I don’t  _ need _ you!”

Chanyeol frowns. They both know that’s a lie, but Lu Han is shaking with anger, fierce and simmering, and Chanyeol knows better than to keep pushing. He sighs. “Take one of us. Any one of us. Just so you have someone to watch your back.”

Lu Han bites back a scream of rage. “I could kill you,” he spits. “Fuck you. I could kill you if I wanted. No one would stop me.”

Chanyeol stares back at him, uncowed. He’s not afraid of him, not right now. He’s never frightened of him when Lu Han wants him to be, and it makes Lu Han want to tear him to pieces.

“Fuck you,” he says again, voice shaking now, openly upset. He turns, eying the twins and then looks to Jongin. “Fine. Come with me.”

The twins share a look, one that Lu Han can’t read, and then Jongin stands with a nod. “Okay, yeah.”

“Be careful,” Chanyeol calls after them. Lu Han ignores him.

—

Lu Han actually quite likes the rain, he finds out. It starts coming down in sheets while they’re out searching, and Lu Han knows it’s not natural, that it’s probably actually intended to be dangerous, but it’s almost pleasant. And it’s probably worrying Chanyeol sick, which serves him right. Chanyeol can worry all he likes.

He and Jongin find a high ridge where the river has cut out a rough cliff shape on either side, settling in to wait out the rain. The water rises too high to be natural, and Lu Han dangles his legs off the edge of the ridge and kicks his feet in the rising water, humming softly as the rain pours down around him, hair sticking to his skin, clothes repelling water as best they can.

It’s a few minutes before the wave buffets along the walls of the canyon, tugging at Lu Han’s legs, and he lets the current pull at him, strong and fast. For a moment, he debates slipping down into the water, just to see how it goes, wondering how it would feel to go under and run out of air, wondering how drowning would feel. But he’s got things to do, people to kill.

It doesn’t take too long for the water to go down, and then there are cannons going off, a few here and there. Lu Han scoffs. “Pathetic,” he says, shaking his head. Jongin makes a noise of confirmation, standing, and peers over the edge of the cliffs to the rushing river below, fuller now, but going down quickly. Lu Han peers over as well. “It’s stupid to die from water.”

“Some people can’t swim. Or weren’t ready,” Jongin says with a shrug. “Though fuck only knows why you’d come to a survival competition and not be able to swim.”

“Stupidity,” Lu Han decides with a shrug before he slips down the side of the cliff to the river, now almost back at its normal level like the storm never happened at all. Weird gamemaker tricks. They were apparently getting as annoyed by the lack of death as Lu Han was. The difference is, some rain and a tidal wave doesn’t sate Lu Han the way it’s probably sated the gamemakers trying for good television. A few cannons going off isn’t the same as having blood on his hands or someone pleading for their lives or at least a clean death.

Still, if anyone was caught by that wave, they’ll have been carried down here along the river bank, and if they’ve survived, Lu Han can have some fun. The thought makes him smile, and he finds a makeshift trail along the riverbank, weaving in and out of the tree line whenever it comes close enough to the bank. The sun comes back out overhead, steadily, drying his clothes and hair, making his skin feel flushed with something.

There’s a feeling deep in his gut, and he’s not sure what it is. It’s similar to the ones before the reaping, similar to the ones the got seeing Xiumin on stage. It’s almost eager, mixed with irritation at the thing he wants not already being in his hands, but then there’s the thrill of waiting, like a child staring at the sweets they’ll have after dinner and salivating for it the entire meal. Lu Han doesn’t know why he even feels all of this, but there’s something fluttering nervously in his gut as he slips into another patch of trees, intent on continuing before he feels a hand grab his wrist.

He looks at Jongin in curiosity, twisting his arm free with a pout, but then he hears it too. Voices. They’re muffled, and Lu Han has to creep closer to hear, and even then it’s more that one is coming into focus and the other is a muffled hum of a quieter voice, but even from that much, Lu Han knows it. Xiumin.

Lu Han straightens gleefully, prowling forward, stopped again by Jongin’s hand, and Lu Han grabs Jongin’s arm in reply this time, bouncing petulantly on the balls of his feet.

“Let’s wait and see,” Jongin says quietly, and before Lu Han can refuse, adds, “If he sees you, he’ll act different. You should see how he’s doing just like this.”

“Oh,” Lu Han replies, tilting his head. Jongin’s proving himself in ways Lu Han didn’t expect, and just like earlier, he beams at the man, practically giddy as he tells him firmly, “I like you.”

Jongin nods, the corner of his mouth twitching, but even that movement isn’t enough to bring his expression up into a smile. He’s watching Lu Han with the same hawk-like intensity Chanyeol always watches him with, even if Lu Han’s not doing anything but creeping closer to Xiumin through the trees, dragging his tongue absently over his teeth.

“—the fuck up, Tao. I’m sure you’re not used to people who don’t want to stick their dick in you for the sheer pleasure of fucking an ass without having to bother stretching it first,” Xiumin is saying, voice filled with annoyance and vitriol. It’s almost spiteful, and Lu Han’s not sure if that’s a good sound on him or not, but he’s willing to keep listening and find out, especially because Xiumin is tacking on a vehement, “but just because I wasn’t willing to give it up for anyone willing to touch my dick back at the Capitol doesn’t mean I’m incompetent.”

It’s not a proud moment that it takes Lu Han a few moments to even understand what they’re talking about, but when it clicks, Lu Han feels like all the air’s been punched out of him. He hadn’t even imagined before now, but the thought of Xiumin squirming under his knife, as good a thought as it is, has almost nothing on the thought of him like Chanyeol, bleeding and letting himself be held down while Lu Han rides his cock, making him hiss in pain and moan in pleasure in almost equal amounts. Chanyeol looks pretty like that, but Xiumin — beautiful, breathtaking Xiumin — would be so much better.

Lu Han doesn’t even bother to stifle his whimper, but it doesn’t matter. He’s close enough to see now, close enough to watch Xiumin kicks out at his companion — Tao. What is with these names Xiumin says that taste like filth on his tongue? — with enough violence that it earns him a shrill yelp of pain and a cessation of whatever smartass remark Tao was trying to retort with. The sound of pain makes shivers roll up Lu Han’s spine, and he bites into his lip hard enough that he nearly splits it when Xiumin’s voice bites out, “We both know that given the opportunity, you’d be on your knees for my dick in a second.”

“There’s no way in hell you could make me get on my knees for you,  _ bitch _ ,” snaps Tao, who is nothing more than a tall boy in the garb of One with bags under his eyes and an accent to his voice. He doesn’t know him, not really, but Lu Han bristles at the disrespect anyways, annoyed at the way he blatantly continues on after being told to stop. If it were him, he’d have the brat screaming in an instant, and a part of him wants to do it anyways, wants to enforce Xiumin’s threat.

But it’s not needed. As Lu Han watches, the conversation devolves until Xiumin is proving his point himself, pushing Tao to his knees, and then it moves oh so quickly from Tao being on his knees for Xiumin’s dick to Xiumin fighting him to the ground, shoving his face into the dirt and spitting all kinds of hateful things that make Lu Han whimper and shake, shoving his fingers into his mouth and biting them bloody, wondering what it would be like to have Xiumin under him like that — Tao isn’t saying no, and Lu Han wonders if Xiumin would, if he’d refuse him at every turn or if he’d moan like Tao is.

Xiumin is fierce and a little cold, nothing like the boy Lu Han had watched murmur sweetly to his friend and everything like the boy who had spat threats at Lu Han and been unable to follow through. He’s broken, a little, and it’s absolutely exquisite.

Jongin is somewhere nearby, but Lu Han doesn’t care, can’t bring himself to care as he pushes his free hand into his pants and wraps his fingers around his dick, getting himself off to the image before him, to Xiumin shoving a boy into the ground and fucking him, rough and callous and just shy of the kind of pain that Lu Han craves. If Xiumin was that rough with him, he’d moan even better, Lu Han finds himself thinking, cock drooling precome with how hard he is, how much he wants. He wants Xiumin like that, mocking him, hurting him. He wants to do it to Xiumin too. He wants them to tear each other apart like that, wants to hear Xiumin let out those same broken moans, wants them punctuated by screams, wants them, wants them.

How come this boy gets them? It’s not _ fair _ ! Lu Han killed Xiumin’s stupid ‘brother’ and now Xiumin’s off fucking around with this little bitch? Lu Han’s hand shakes with anger, squeezing too tight around his cock, making him halfway double over to protect himself even as he strokes himself faster, eyes watering and so close he can hardly breathe.

Sometime later, Xiumin starts laughing, the sex apparently over, and the sound alone drives all of the air out of Lu Han all over again, so sharp it’s almost a physical ache, and he comes hard, a silent, airless scream tearing from his lips as he pitches forward against a nearby tree trunk, half in pain, mostly dazed, mind scattering in a million different directions all at once.

How fucking dare he? How dare Xiumin find someone like this little bitch? Even if they hate each other, Tao still has Xiumin in a way, and Lu Han feels the anger under his skin, burning inside his veins and roiling like snakes in the space the warmth of orgasm had just vacated.

He’s going to kill him too and make Xiumin watch, just like he had to watch Lay. He’s going to cut Tao to ribbons and then he’s going to fuck Xiumin just like that, he’s going to hurt Xiumin and make him scream, make him cry, make him come until Lu Han is the only person left in the whole wide world, until Xiumin is all his in every way that will ever count. He’s going to rip Xiumin apart from the inside out until Xiumin is begging him for more, until he sounds just like the little whore he was just accusing Tao of being.

And then Lu Han’s going to kill him.

He curls into himself, wrapping his arms around his body, the thoughts making his mind whirl, his breath come in quick, fast exhalations. He can barely make everything make sense, too busy watching Xiumin and planning, deciding, knowing what he’s going to do with such certainty that it’s almost terrifying.

Nothing in the world has felt this right since he was five years old and picked up a knife. Nothing at all. He knows, the way he knows that he is a weapon, that he is meant to destroy every single part of Xiumin until there is nothing left.

Jongin catches his arm, looking mildly disgusted as he looks Lu Han over. “We have to go,” he says, voice firm, and Lu Han doesn’t even try to protest, too wrapped up in his own thoughts, his own desires. He half trips after Jongin, whispering to himself under his breath, keening quietly every so often. The inside of his pants are sticky, and his fingers taste of his own come when he sticks them in his mouth, chewing absently on them as they walk, back towards the others and away from Xiumin.

Lu Han’s not worried. He’s meant to kill Xiumin. He’ll find him again. It won’t be hard. This is what he was meant for. He’s a weapon, built specifically for this purpose. He giggles around his fingers at the thought of it.

They get back to Chanyeol almost too quickly, and he bolts upright in relief, exhaling quietly and muttering something under his breath about water, but then he catches sight of Lu Han’s face. “Lu Han?” he asks, and when Lu Han only giggles around his hand, he pries the story out of Jongin before turning back to Lu Han with a tight jaw and a look of pained concern on his face. “Lu Han, snap out of it.”

Lu Han merely bites more firmly on his fingers and giggles when his words come out muffled, voice gleeful and halfway towards singsong as he croons, “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to ruin him. Fuck, Channie, he’ll be so pretty.”

Chanyeol doesn’t let the others keep watch that night, staying up by himself to watch as Lu Han giggles and hums quietly to himself, not even bothering to take out his knives and cut himself when he can so easily hurt himself with the memory of the way Tao had moaned under Xiumin.

—

He plans to go and find Xiumin soon, but he doesn’t get the chance until days later. Chanyeol is keeping a close eye on him, distracting him by letting him rip into a scared, loner Six that they come across. Lu Han knows what he’s doing, but he likes getting to rip into the boy, cutting him to pieces with as much care as he has ever shown anyone, memorizing what makes him scream and what makes him cry and beg.

He thinks about doing this to Tao, and it makes him happy. It also makes him halfway to wild, and Chanyeol peels him off the boy long after the cannon has fired, when the corpse below him is littered with knife wounds, a bloodied massacre of gaping holes and brutalized flesh, looking more like pulverized meat than the remains of a human being. He’s cut the face to shreds, left nothing of the person it used to be, and it’s so easy to imagine.

Lu Han smiles at the shape beneath him, wriggling his fingers into some of the knife wounds and then pulling them free, examining the redness coating his hand, rolling it between his fingers until it starts drying and gets tacky. It’s late at night, and Lu Han smiles at Chanyeol with bloody arms and reaches out as if requesting a hug, pulling Chanyeol in.

They fuck a few feet from a bloodied corpse, and if Lu Han’s whimpered sounds of pleasure-pain carry a different name of his lips than normal, Chanyeol doesn’t say anything. He’s too big for the illusion to hold anyways, and not quite brutal enough, though Chanyeol knows exactly the ways to be rough with him. But Chanyeol has never done anything like shove Lu Han’s face into the dirt and call him filthy names, not like Xiumin had.

Lu Han’s honestly a bit jealous, and it makes him feel bad. He doesn’t like feeling bad, and he curls petulantly into Chanyeol after, biting hard into him whenever Chanyeol tries to get up and clinging to him until morning.

Only then does he let Chanyeol tug him to the river and wash them both, Chanyeol making faces at the blood on his own skin, mostly the Six’s, though there’s a bit of his own, as always after Lu Han’s gotten at him. After, he pulls Lu Han into the water, washing his hands and arms for him, rinsing off as much of the blood as he can manage.

Lu Han watches the water run pink with a pout, distracted by the way Chanyeol’s touch softens at his fingertips, being annoyingly gently with Lu Han’s fingers. They’re bruised underneath the blood, bitten up from Lu Han’s rough treatment of them, and Chanyeol’s evidently trying not to make them worse, but even the tiniest of touch to them hurts a little, and it makes Lu Han’s pout threaten to curve into a smile.

He closes his eyes, leaning heavily against Chanyeol and pushing his fingers into his touch, the bad feeling from last night all but gone. He seems relaxed, like he’s not paying attention, and Chanyeol doesn’t give any indication that he thinks any different, but when Lu Han tenses almost abruptly, Chanyeol doesn’t seem surprised either. He lets Lu Han go, lets him turn slowly, aware of a faint splash of noise too loud to be anything smaller than a human, though he has no idea which way it’s coming from until he sees the body floating downriver.

It’s a girl, and she’s splashing weakly, trying hard to kick to the surface and failing, evidently hurt. Every few moments, she goes back under, and then resurfaces again, clinging to anything she can find to cling to, be it floating branches or other things, but she’s missing three two fingers on one hand, and it’s clearly making it hard for her to hold on to anything. Lu Han is immediately intrigued, and he tugs with interest on Chanyeol’s arm, gesturing.

“Careful,” Chanyeol warns, but he doesn’t try to stop Lu Han.

Splashing his way into the water, he tugs her to the surface and pulls her up, out of the river and onto the stony shore. She gurgles, coughing up water, curling in on herself, and Lu Han sweeps her hair out of her face to get a good look at her. There’s nothing special about her, and she’s completely unextraordinary, but maybe she’ll have something interesting to say. If not, he can still kill her.

“Are you okay?” he asks, tilting his head, and then comments, “You’re hurt.”

The girl blinks blearily at him, clearly waterlogged, and it takes her far too long before she tenses, shoulders stiffening. “I’m not hurt bad enough that I can’t kill you,” she spits back, but her voice is more fear than anything, weak enough that Chanyeol doesn’t even bother to step forward from where he’s waiting patiently, only leaves Lu Han hovering over her, crouched over her drenched frame. He fights back a giggle at her bravado, and she cringes away from him and tries to snarl, “Get the fuck away from me!”

Lu Han smiles at her. “How are you going to kill me if you couldn’t even fight off whoever did this to you?” he asks, petting her hair back again and making her whimper with fear. “But if you’re a good girl, I’ll kill you quickly.”

“Fuck off,” she chokes. “It was that stupid One. He’s stronger than you.”

Something stings there at the back of his mind, something wrong, but Lu Han can’t place it. He shrugs. “Don’t worry. Just because someone’s stronger doesn’t mean they’re a better killer,” he says, and pulls out a knife.

She’s screaming and gurgling long before he thinks of the question that made him pause. “Why’d you try to fight a One anyways?” he asks, twisting his knife in her side and making her gag and cough up blood, choking on a sob. He frowns and twists again. “Answer me.”

“I d-didn’t,” she whimpers. “I—“

But then she chokes on more blood and Lu Han gets too impatient to wait and drives his knife harder into her until she stops screaming. He stands slowly, rolling his shoulders, and then looks to Chanyeol, still waiting for him.

“I think I need another bath,” he giggles and watches Chanyeol sigh before coming over and pulling Lu Han back to the water to wash his hands and arms clean yet again.

—

They come across the exit two days later. It’s nothing special, something Lu Han might have ignored if not for how strangely out of place it was. The arena is mostly forest, a few clearings, the river cutting a gouge through the rough northeast.

It makes no sense for the rock formation to have come about naturally, a rough, circular shape like a tower built out of stone. It’s not very wide, maybe ten meters in diameter, but there’s a rough entrance in one side, and it’s simply not  _ natural _ .

Chanyeol steps forward, fingers skimming over the edge of the entrance, and shrugs. “There’s nothing—” he starts, and then yelps in pain and jerks back as the entrance flickers with a sharp light.

Lu Han snarls and steps forward, but Chanyeol brushes him away. “It’s fine. Shocked me. It’s not that bad, but we wouldn’t survive walking through that.”

Lu Han shrugs. “We have people to kill anyways. It doesn’t matter.”

“We still need to know how to get out,” Taemin points out from behind him.

“Something—” Jongin squints at the entrance. “Chanyeol, let me see an arrow.”

He grabs it, pokes as the entrance with it, hissing a bit as he too is shocked, but the metal makes whatever barrier is there smoke and steam, lighting up white. There are words, only visible for a moment, but none of them can read them in the bright daylight dappling through the trees.

Lu Han fidgets uncomfortably. “What does it  _ matter _ ?” He growls again. “I have to kill everyone. We can’t leave. I have to kill them. I have to kill Xiumin.”

Chanyeol sighs. “We can stick near,” he says. “Make sure no one else is trying something.”

—

They make camp a little to the east of it, north, as they find out, from the other camp. It’s best that way, and they’re close enough to keep an eye on the perceived exit.

Lu Han doesn’t care much, not when he has a purpose to fulfill, but Chanyeol’s adamant enough that Lu Han doesn’t fight him on it, only huffs and sulks and purposefully pisses Chanyeol off by flirting with the twins, sitting in their laps and draping himself across them and snuggling up close to them in a way that makes them tense up at first and then slowly relax as they get used to why he’s doing it.

It’s only when Taemin lets Lu Han kiss him, biting at his lower lip out of boredom and pouting when Taemin doesn’t do it back hard enough that Chanyeol finally snaps. “If you’re that bored,” he tells him irritably, “go scout.”

Lu Han hops up happily, tugging on Taemin’s arm. “Okay!” he says, beaming, knowing that he’s won this round, and Taemin stands and shrugs at Chanyeol half apologetically as he follows Lu Han into the woods, the two of them slipping through the trees toward the large camp. Lu Han is smaller, quieter, probably stealthier than Taemin, but Taemin seems to know better than to let Lu Han be the lead scout here.

Taemin’s not Lu Han’s handler by any means, but he’s on their team, someone that Lu Han is supposed to defend, and he doesn’t lash out at Taemin when the older twin catches him tight at the sound of a yell, one hand clamped around Lu Han’s elbow. “What was that?” Taemin asks, eerily calm. Or maybe he’s just calm by Lu Han’s standards, because Lu Han is excited by the sound, bouncing on his toes and leaning forward towards the noise. “Should we go look?”

“Yes!” Lu Han says, voice a gleeful crow of delight as Taemin’s suggestion. Chanyeol would be so cautious about all of this. “Yes, yes, yes. I want to!”

“Okay, but you have to be quiet,” Taemin says, putting his hand over Lu Han’s mouth to quiet him, and even though it’s evident by his tone that he’s joking, Lu Han still bites at Taemin’s hand to get him to pull it away, leaving crescent teeth marks in the fleshy part of Taemin’s palm.

He grunts in surprise and frowns at Lu Han, but the expression turns more than mildly confused when Lu Han picks up Taemin’s hand again and kisses the spot, nosing at the bitemark almost lovingly before dropping Taemin’s hand. “Can we go now? I want to see who screamed.”

Taemin doesn’t say anything, just lets Lu Han guide them forward again, steady at his back, looking over his shoulder just in case while Lu Han slinks forward almost single-mindedly. Having Taemin watching their back means Lu Han has space to do what he wants a little, and maybe, if he’s very lucky—

And Lu Han’s luck seems to be holding, just not very well, because when he pauses just out of sight of the clearing, he sees a small group of people, a little over half a dozen of them. Almost all of them have weapons, and they seem to be bickering with one another, and smack dab in the middle is Xiumin, crouched over Tao and glaring daggers at someone Lu Han doesn’t recognize. There’s something strange about his posture, something different, but that hardly matters — Xiumin is  _ here. _

Lu Han wriggles in excitement, wanting to go, but Taemin’s hand between his shoulders is a warm reminder not to. Lu Han, no matter how good of a weapon he is, cannot face down seven people at once, not when all of them seem tense already and have weapons halfway at the ready, clearly willing to kill each other, much less anyone else they come across.

Taemin blinks a couple of times, lowering his mouth towards Lu Han’s ear. “Aren’t those two Ones?” he asks, nodding towards a few of them, the one with the eyes that Lu Han is still debating over — Kris? He thinks? — and Tao.

Lu Han beams, humming softly, mostly to himself, but if it answers Taemin too, so much the better. Taemin hums back, though he sounds uncertain. “That’s the leader of the camp,” he says, pointing past Lu Han at a wide-eyed boy that Lu Han had already lost interest in before even looking at him. When he shrugs, Taemin adds, “If the camp is adding Ones, we might be in for a rough time. I’m not sure…”

He trails off when he realizes that Lu Han isn’t listening. Lu Han is staring because Xiumin has straightened, and he’s done it with a wince, clearly injured, his shirt slightly bloodstained in places.

Lu Han’s blood boils. How  _ dare _ someone else hurt him. Was it Tao? Was it someone in this group?

Lu Han straightens, suddenly not caring that there are seven of them. He’ll rip them all to shreds and pin Xiumin down, go over his injuries anew until they’re all Lu Han’s.

Taemin grabs Lu Han’s wrist and tugs, not letting Lu Han go. Lu Han is fuming, openly, and he tries to claw out at Taemin without making too much noise, but Taemin is stronger than he looks, all hidden muscle, and he ends up having to grit his teeth and let Taemin tug him along until they’re long out of earshot and Lu Han can thrash out of his hold and properly fight back, shoving and clawing at him, fingers both causing pain and trying to hold on as Taemin hisses and shifts, trying to avoid the worst of it.

“Someone hurt him!” he says, shaking with anger. “Someone hurt my Xiumin! It’s not fair!”

Taemin blinks in a way that’s more like a flinch. “We’re all trying to kill each other,” he tries to reason with Lu Han, “Of course he got hurt.”

Lu Han makes a noise of rage that is neither human nor animal. It’s sharp and shrill, like steel crashing off steel, and Taemin flinches away harder with wide eyes as Lu Han makes more and more sounds, letting go of Taemin to start clawing at himself, fingers gouging at his arms. “ _ I’m _ going to kill him. Not anyone else! No one else is allowed to touch him! He’s mine! He’s supposed to be  _ mine _ !”

“Lu Han,” Taemin pleads, grabbing for Lu Han’s hands and trying to pry his fingers from his arms, but when he manages, Lu Han lets out a broken noise and jerks away from Taemin so fast that he falls over himself and lands on his ass. It hurts in a different way, sharp and startling enough that he gasps, fingers letting go of himself to try and brace himself, off balance. Abruptly, uncontrollably, he starts crying.

“Lu Han,” Taemin repeats, and there’s a few beats of hesitation before warm arms scoop him up, and Taemin is heaving him up and carrying him through the trees. They go on that way for a while, long enough that Lu Han’s eyes get red and he feels horrible and ugly and bad and angry all at once, but he doesn’t want Taemin to drop him and he’s afraid enough of that that he tries to hold still through his crying, letting out a pained sound of betrayal when Taemin drops him. But they’ve arrived back to camp and he’s only dumping him in front of Chanyeol, who looks angry and confused and concerned all at once.

“What’s…?” Chanyeol starts, but Taemin only shrugs, clearly as bewildered as anything, and moves away. Lu Han lets out another noise of fear, jerking up wildly to watch Taemin, but when Chanyeol kneels in front of him, Lu Han hiccups and sobs, latching onto him like a lifeline.

“Do you want to hurt someone?” Chanyeol asks soothingly, and Lu Han nods furiously, teeth digging so hard into his lower lip that it threatens to split. Humming, Chanyeol moves as if to offer himself, but Lu Han recoils violently.

“Not you! I want to hurt him!” he whines out, and Chanyeol’s look to Taemin obviously receives some sort of response, mouthed or otherwise, because Chanyeol sighs and pets Lu Han’s hair while Lu Han finds his whimpered protests of, “It’s not fair! He’s mine!”

“Hush,” Chanyeol shushes him, probably because he has nothing better to offer. And then he does, because he whispers, “Do you want me to hurt you?”

It’s an offer Lu Han can’t refuse. He nods frantically, making small, scattered noises in his throat, hurrying to push a favorite knife into Chanyeol’s hand and press against him, letting Chanyeol maneuver him however he wants, so long as Chanyeol is willing to do this for him.

He doesn’t realize until later, when he’s sitting in Chanyeol’s lap, legs out in front of him and letting Chanyeol slide a knife in small, straight lines across his thigh, that the twins haven’t left for once, are still watching as Lu Han tips his head back against Chanyeol’s shoulder and shakes, whimpering and aching and clearly hard in the underwear Chanyeol’s stripped him to.

Maybe he should be embarrassed, but this is proof in a way, of what he is. No human likes this. No one should. But Lu Han is a weapon. He thrives off of pain, drinking it in like nectar, like fuel, burning in his veins and forging him stronger, refocusing him on what he is, what he needs to do.

“Want…” he mumbles vacantly and then trips over his own words into a moan when Chanyeol’s next line slices over a particularly sensitive spot. “Want to hurt him,” he breathes after a bit, back to knowing what he needs to do. “I’m supposed to be the one to hurt him.”

Chanyeol doesn’t respond, just presses the knife to Lu Han’s leg again and goes on hurting him like Lu Han needs.

—

The twins aren’t hesitant around him after that. That’s not the right word for the way they act. Taemin seems more concerned than anything, and Jongin talks to him in softer tones, like he’s a child. Lu Han doesn’t really care one way or another, but it’s a little irritating that they treat him less like he’s vicious and more like he’s fragile. And like he needs to prove that there’s a difference, Lu Han’s twitchiness grows faster than it rightfully should until it’s hardly afternoon the next day before he’s itching to go and hurt someone. To go and hurt Xiumin, specifically.

It hasn’t been long enough for Chanyeol to sate him as easily, even if Lu Han spends hours and hours of the day pressing his palms flat into the top of his legs until the bandages are stained and Chanyeol has to rebandage Lu Han all over again with an irritable murmur of, “And this is why our plan had to include getting at all the supplies.”

Lu Han shrugs lazily. He would have made do with just bleeding, but Chanyeol’s so careful that Lu Han would feel touched if it wasn’t practically Chanyeol’s job. Also, probably, if he wasn’t so busy squirming away from the touches to be petulant, whining, “I want to go! I want to hurt him!” and bartering, “I’ll even take one of the twins. They’ll help me! I just want to see him. I won’t even attack the camp if he’s still there!”

Chanyeol sighs. “Can’t you wait? Give it a few days. Let your legs heal some.”

“You’re the one who hurt me,” Lu Han retorts, and the look Chanyeol gives him makes Lu Han laugh openly, kicking his legs and upsetting the last of Chanyeol’s bandaging. With a groan of annoyance, Chanyeol gives up, letting go of him and letting Lu Han stand and move his legs, the sting of them making him smile even as he whines, “I want to go. It won’t stop me!”

Chanyeol frowns at him, clearly looking to refuse, but Jongin stands up and shrugs. “I’ll go with him. Might as well do some scouting anyways. I can get a better look at what’s going on with their camp. If ‘Minnie is right and they’re adding people like Ones, this is going a whole lot different than we thought.”

Chanyeol looks at Jongin, raising an eyebrow, but Lu Han has already attached himself victoriously to Jongin’s arm with a Cheshire grin. “I can scout,” he says, batting his lashes and tempted to rub his cheek against Jongin’s arm like a cat who’s just eaten the canary. “We’ll go and scout and see my Xiumin and we’ll come right back. I won’t even touch him.”

Chanyeol’s voice is strained, jaw clenched and irritation clear on his features even as he sighs, “Fine. Just… fine. You come back before tonight. Me and Taemin will go see what’s going on with the exit.”

Lu Han beams, still latched onto Jongin even as Taemin comes over and claps his brother on the shoulder, squeezing tightly as Jongin’s hand comes up to Taemin’s shoulder to mirror the motion. It’s a wordless gesture at each other, lingering for just a moment before the two split apart and Taemin moves to follow Chanyeol while Jongin and Lu Han head off south, Lu Han making a big show of following Jongin, half latched at his back.

“So what’s your fascination with this Xiumin guy?” Jongin asks after a while, voice barely loud enough to pierce the quiet around them. Lu Han knows he has the option of ignoring it, going on without even considering the question, but he doesn’t. The words force him to pause, body stilling as his mind races to understand what’s being asked of him.

It should be obvious, right? Xiumin is fascinating in a way that Lu Han can’t express, makes his skin ache to touch and take, take, take. It’s just there, just something inherent, and Lu Han mouths silently for a moment around syllables lost between his head and his mouth.

“I…” he grits out after a minute, face contorting into ugly shapes, “I’m… I’m supposed to hurt him. I’m want to. I  _ have _ to!”

There’s something very there, very important, and Lu Han doesn’t understand how Jongin, how all of them, even Chanyeol,  _ don’t _ . They don’t understand how very necessary it is, how very much he knew, from the moment he saw him, that Xiumin was meant for him in some way. It’s frustrating that they don’t understand because Lu Han doesn’t have words for this intangible necessity that burns in his veins.

“I don’t get it,” Jongin says, almost echoing Lu Han’s thoughts and making him want to scream in frustration but for the fact that they’re at least attempting subterfuge, as much as they can while having a conversation. If one could call this a conversation. “What’s your deal with hurting people? And being hurt?”

“I’m… supposed to…” Lu Han says again, words jarring against the back of his teeth, making him vibrate. He digs his fingers into his thighs as he walks, the pain bracing, solidifying, even as he stumbles a little from the awkward walking position.

Jongin catches him by the arm, looking at him intensely and then lets go. He doesn’t say anything else, but Lu Han can feel the weight of his eyes, and it makes him feel strange. Why doesn’t Jongin understand that Lu Han is a weapon, that everything he does is supposed to cause pain? Why does Jongin keep treating him like this, like he’s not all but designed to be able to kill anyone and everyone that gets in his way?

Lu Han digs his fingers in harder, tripping again. Jongin makes a noise in his throat. “Maybe we should rest for a while.”

“No!” Lu Han says, pulling his hands away from his legs hurriedly and looking wildly at Jongin. “No, I want to keep going! I need to!”

“Lu Han, you don’t need to,” Jongin tries to stress, and Lu Han feels like Jongin just sucker punched him. He stumbles back and then turns and dashes into the trees, ignoring Jongin calling after him, just running through the trees, dodging underbrush and making no more noise than a large animal, because he is spry and limber and bred to be a weapon, a killer.

He doesn’t stop until his lungs are burning almost as badly as his legs which have started bleeding something awful, red seeping into the bandages and making them sticky. He doesn’t know if it’s visible on his pants yet, but they’re dark colored, so it’s hard to tell. Everything hurts, and Lu Han feels himself settling into the pain, into the familiar shape of his own body, into everything he needs to do his job.

Somewhere behind him, in the distance, he can hear Jongin making his way through the trees, but somewhere ahead of him he hears muted voices. It’s by distance, not design; whoever is speaking is making no attempt to keep their voices low, and Lu Han wonders at it. Maybe it’s the Ones, he thinks gleefully. Maybe he’ll get to rip apart Xiumin’s new pet bitch. If not, maybe he’ll at least get to cut out the tall one’s eyes; that’s something he’s been distracted by long enough that it might sate him a little.

Slinking forward, he makes as little noise as possible, listening for the sounds to turn into words, but they’re getting softer, more muffled, and Lu Han has to get almost painfully close, slinking through the trees, almost on top of them before he can understand the half-familiar voice arguing, “I’m not leaving you and that’s it. If that’s how fucking certain you are that he’s going to kill you, then I’m not leaving. If he kills you, then he’s… he’s killing me too.”

Lu Han hears the stutter, the fear of death, and it makes him smile a little to himself. It’s cute how afraid they all are. Maybe he can make that fear come true.

But he doesn’t even get time to really consider it before a much more familiar voice cuts through everything, narrowing the world down to nothing but Xiumin’s voice snapping, “No. Not you’re not… Tao, don’t do this to me! If you don’t want him to kill me, fine, but you have to do it, because Lay is gone and that’s  _ all I have left _ .”

If Jongin’s comments felt like a sucker punch, this feels like someone just stabbed him in the stomach. No!  _ No! _ No one is allowed to kill Xiumin but him! Xiumin is his!

Lu Han scrambles for a weapon, fingers closing around a knife as he hears Xiumin’s voice break just a little on, “Tao, why don’t you  _ get it _ ? This—“

But Lu Han won’t ever find out what Xiumin’s “this” is leading to, because Jongin catches up right about then, stumbling to a halt and making too much noise, the leaves rustling and crunching under his heavier steps. Lu Han tenses, nearly whirling on Jongin, but Xiumin’s already going on, voice tighter now as he hisses, too quiet for Lu Han to make out the words, but the tone is urgent, warning.

He can hear Tao’s though, false bravado clear in every note as he calls out, “I’m not leaving. Come on, come out!”

He’s taunting Lu Han and after Xiumin’s words, just the sound of his voice is enough to make Lu Han’s hand tighten on his blade, ignoring Jongin’s low warning of — “Lu Han, stop! Are you trying to start a war? They’re with the camp!”

Lu Han clenches his jaw, fingers settling further up, not caring that he’s slicing up his fingertips as he adjusts them to the perfect grip, rocking on his heels, the temptation to murder him so strong that Lu Han feels almost dizzy with it.

And then Xiumin’s voice again cutting through the haze. “Tao, shut up! Don’t— Let’s go! I’ll go with you for now,” he says, clearly frantic, and Lu Han realizes in a split second that he might lose Xiumin for good if he lets him go now. Tao might kill him. Tao might take his Xiumin away, and Lu Han can’t let him, won’t let him. The knife is out of his fingers before he even thinks about it, cutting off Xiumin’s sentence at, “but we need—“

And then Tao is staggering back, and Jongin is cursing and throwing himself forward, and everything is wrong. Lu Han reaches forward, too late, trying to catch him, but Jongin is already on top of Tao, twisting Lu Han’s knife further into his body, and Lu Han isn’t sure why; it’s not necessary. Lu Han is a weapon, precise, exact. He knows how to kill, and Lu Han doesn’t know why Jongin feels the need to follow through on Lu Han’s kills. He just knows, in the split second after it’s happened, that it’s a very, very bad idea.

Xiumin, smaller even than Lu Han, is on top of Jongin in a second, and there’s something about him, something feral and sharp that Lu Han can feel in his very bones like it’s him that Xiumin is pinning to the ground. Except that Lu Han isn’t the one that Xiumin is wrestling down, grabbing a rock and—

A better person might have screamed, but Lu Han has done much worse to people, and he only watches in fascination as Jongin’s skull collapses under the impact of the rock in Xiumin’s hand. It’s mesmerizing, brutal, and were it only a blade in Xiumin’s hand, Lu Han might think…

He had thought once that Xiumin could be a killer, and now he is one. Lu Han wants to step out of hiding and pull the rock from Xiumin’s hand, lick Xiumin’s fingers free of blood before biting down to draw more. He sways, unsteadily, wanting to step out, wanting to touch and take and hurt.

But Xiumin crawls off of Jongin’s corpse to paw at Tao who is shaking and bleeding something awful, certain to die without the kind of medical attention that it’s impossible to get in a place like this. He’s dying, and Xiumin looks like it was just him that was murdered, not the boy underneath him, voice a stuttered babble that Lu Han wants to swallow, to savor.

“Tao. Tao, come on. Hey. You’re okay. No, no, fuck no, please. I can’t…” he begs, and Lu Han shivers. He wants Xiumin to beg him like that. He’d had the same though hearing him cry over Lay too, but now Xiumin sounds like he’s falling apart, stuttering and whimpering, “Not you too. I can’t lose you too. Not both of you. I can’t.”

Oh. Oh, and Xiumin had tried to replace his friend, tried to patch up that heartbreak and now he’s splintering along those cracks and out, spiderwebbing out, making him shake and stutter, and Lu Han nearly gags when Xiumin whimpers, “Tao, Taozi,” like Tao is anything important at all, like he’s important enough for Xiumin to actual beg him for the answer, “Tell me you’re okay.”

“Ge,” the boy whimpers, and Lu Han bites back something that is somewhere between a scream of rage and a howl of laughter, because that name, all over again, and Xiumin must be falling apart now, but it’s not entirely at Lu Han’s hands and it’s not fair! Lu Han may have stabbed Tao, might be the cause of this, but he’s not the one making Xiumin’s voice break, making him let out noises of agony with every little word of, “Ge, I’m s-sorry, I don’t know if I can go apologize to Lay’s mom after this… you’re g-gonna have to go, okay?”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Xiumin tries, and even to Lu Han’s ears it sounds like a lie, but Xiumin’s trying so hard to be sincere that Lu Han feels sick. It’s not fair! Lu Han’s the cause of this, and still Xiumin is focusing so much on dying boys when he should be paying attention to Lu Han.

“Xiumin… Xiumin, it  _ hurts _ ,” Tao whimpers, and Lu Han’s face splits gleefully. Serves him right. That little fucking bitch, and it serves him right that it hurts.

But Xiumin’s still trying to reassure him, whispering, “Stop that. Stop it right now. You’re going to be okay. Just hush for me, alright? I know it hurts. I’m sorry. But it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

It’s not. It’s not and they all know that. They have to. Xiumin’s tearing himself apart to offer false hope, and Lu Han hopes it wrecks him inside, leaves him broken and hurting and willing to throw himself at Lu Han so Lu Han can finish destroying him, piece by piece, can mock Xiumin’s promises of, “I’ve got you.”

“I wouldn’t be really reassured by that,” Lu Han says, tired of Tao getting all the attention. He wants Xiumin to pay attention to him, to know who’s causing him all of this pain. The thought makes him smile. Xiumin looks so shellshocked already, and when that turns to anger… oh, it’ll be beautiful.

He steps out of the trees, having to skirt the body on the ground, and he looks down at it for a moment, only half comprehending. The face is a massacre, makes it surreal, and it takes him a moment before he remembers, “You killed Jongin.”

Saying it out loud doesn’t quite feel real either. It doesn’t feel like anything. There’s another corpse on the ground. One of many. It’s just that Lu Han hadn’t caused this one. “That’s a pity,” he says, because maybe it is, because honestly, “I kind of liked him.”

“Fuck you,” Xiumin spits at him, and Lu Han’s attention snaps back to focus, all thoughts of Jongin’s body gone in a moment as he watches Xiumin fumble for a knife at his belt. Lu Han smiles, wonders if Xiumin realizes it matches the one sticking out of the stomach of Xiumin’s precious Tao.

“Oh, you’re cute,” he says, because he is, and Lu Han thinks that pointing these things out only make Xiumin angrier, much the same way that his smiles upset Chanyeol. It making Lu Han giggle. “I thought you said you had him? Which is more important to you? Trying to save him or trying to kill me?”

He wants the answer to be the second one, wants Xiumin to give up on Tao’s soon-to-be corpse and attack Lu Han, and he delights at the idea, trying to taunt Xiumin more. “I mean,” he says, trying for irritating and thinking he succeeds, “you have a pretty poor shot at either by themselves, but you can’t do both.”

“I…” Xiumin says, breath choking around the words in a kind of impotent rage that makes Lu Han want to moan aloud, especially when Xiumin spits, “I’m going to rip your throat out with my teeth.”

“Oh,” Lu Han sighs, shuddering at the thought, cock giving a twitch of interest as he imagines Xiumin’s teeth red with blood. He beams, delighted. “I look forward to it, cutie.”

His hand flutters upwards, just a jerk, and Lu Han’s not sure whether he intends for it to touch his throat, to think about the sensation, or to just go ahead and palm his cock, but that twitch brings something else to mind, and Lu Han pounces on it at once, leaning forward towards Xiumin with a gleam in his eyes as he points out, “A nice little callback to your pretty little friend, Lay.”

Xiumin’s eyes go wide and the sound he makes is too sharp, too deadly. It sounds like Lu Han’s own noises sometimes, like metal striking metal, like the clash of weapons sparking against each other. Lu Han’s breath nearly catches in realization, and he goes on reverently, needing Xiumin to make that noise again, needing to know that’s he’s right.

“God, he was shaking so bad when I killed him, you know. All that fear, and all he did was try to get you to leave. And look at you now,” he sighs, fingers itching to reach out and pull Xiumin in, to let Xiumin’s teeth close in his throat if only Lu Han gets to rip him apart at the same time. “Haven’t learned a thing.”

“Don’t you ever—“ Xiumin spits, voice rising in a near fever pitch as he moves forward, and Lu Han lights up, eager, ready. His eyes flicker to the One on the ground, wanting to see his face as his precious ‘ge’ abandons him. Xiumin stops, suddenly, catching Lu Han’s line of sight and stalling, and Lu Han sees the way Xiumin is being ripped apart on the inside.

If Xiumin fights him now, if Lu Han finally tears him apart, Xiumin will never know what’s happened. He’ll never have to see another one of his own die. He’ll never really know, and he’ll die convincing himself that maybe Tao had lived.

Lu Han hesitates. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want Xiumin to die thinking of someone else and imagining ‘maybe’. He doesn’t want that at all. He wants it to be him and Xiumin, and for Xiumin to know that he failed until the very end, that Lu Han is strong enough to rip him apart, because Lu Han’s coming to realize, slowly, exactly why he’s so drawn to Xiumin, the same way a sword is drawn to a shield.

No, in the end, it will just be them. Xiumin has to know that Tao died, that Xiumin’s failed. It’s important. And Lu Han can imagine the pain as Xiumin watches someone he was supposed to care for die because Xiumin is a failure.

Lu Han giggles at the thought, laughter genuine and bright. “Come and find me when you’re ready, ge,” he teases, pressing at the name, ready for this game to end. Lu Han won’t be chasing Xiumin anymore. Xiumin will come to him, offer himself up, and Lu Han will finally get to tear him to pieces. He smiles at the thought, watching Xiumin struggle with the idea, watching him realize what Lu Han is allowing.

He wonders if Xiumin’s realizes that it’s not a kindness.

“Maybe you can bring me more of your lovers to kill off,” he says, to drive the point home. “It’s so adorable watching you panic over them.”

He waits, just a beat, and then slips back into the trees, singing softly to himself, fingers tapping at the blood-damp front of his legs. No one’s going to kill Xiumin now except him. Xiumin can watch Tao and then come to Lu Han, and Lu Han will kill him. He smiles to himself, almost skipping back towards their camp, eager to tell Chanyeol the good news.

—

Taemin hasn’t spoken to him in days — not since he came back with a gleeful smile and without Jongin — and while he knows that it doesn’t matter, Lu Han is honestly getting mildly annoyed by his silence.

“He’s in mourning,” Chanyeol tells him, holding Lu Han still to keep Lu Han from saying anything to Taemin. Normally, he’d argue, but right now he hardly even squirms. He’s content for now, a sense of calm making him feel still and quiet, like he’s in stasis, waiting.

There haven’t been any more cannons, but Lu Han trusts his aim. Tao will be dead soon, and then Xiumin will come for Lu Han. It’s just a matter of waiting, and Lu Han is not a patient person, but for once it seems to be okay.

There’s an end in sight, and Xiumin will be Lu Han’s soon enough.

He can’t stop playing it in his mind either, repeating it over and over, and he supposes he should feel sad for Jongin, but all he can think of is the wild viciousness in Xiumin’s eyes as he murdered Jongin, smashing in the twin’s face with a brutality that continues to make Lu Han shiver with excitement. He’s spent days now falling apart at the thought of the way Xiumin had looked and the noise he had made in his throat like striking metal, and Lu Han is barely holding it together with the thought of it.

He understand fully now, why he was drawn to Xiumin from the start, why everything about Xiumin calls to him. Xiumin is less refined, less perfected; he hasn’t been honed to a point like Lu Han has. But Xiumin is as much a weapon as Lu Han.

It’s not quite the same. Where Chanyeol comforts Lu Han often with the reminder that he’s made for attack, not defense, Xiumin seems to be the opposite. He’s something made to defend with, something made to harm people only for the sake of protecting someone, and Lu Han assumes that he’s quite good at what he does if he’s made it this far without being cast aside. It’s just that Lu Han is better.

But if Xiumin is a defensive weapon, then it’s practically Lu Han’s duty to test how strong his defenses really are, how strong Xiumin himself really is. And Lu Han is so eager to cut into him, to see how much he can take before he shatters to pieces under the onslaught. He has to hurt him. He needs to.

It won’t take much longer. Lu Han has killed two of the people Xiumin was supposed to protect now, and he can see Xiumin cracking under the strain. Once Tao is properly dead, once Xiumin has seen what his own failures have cost him, he’ll be cracked all throughout, and Lu Han will have so many places where he can settle in and push until he truly breaks him. And Lu Han is so ready for it to happen, but he has to wait, just for now, just until Xiumin finishes cracking.

He hums softly to himself to pass a little bit of the time he has to wait, and it earns him a dull look from Taemin who’s a few meters away, curled up by himself. Lu Han tips his head to one side, lifting an eyebrow, smiling sweetly. He opens his mouth to comment, but Chanyeol catches his face with one hand, palm over Lu Han’s mouth to quiet him.

“His brother is dead,” Chanyeol hisses, voice lowered to keep Taemin from hearing. “His brother is dead because you wanted to go ‘check on’ a boy you want to murder, and now Jongin is dead. Even if you can’t show some respect, don’t insult him for feeling sad about it.”

Lu Han bites down hard enough to draw blood, the skin of Chanyeol’s palm splitting under his teeth. But Chanyeol only flinches, not bothering to pull away, too used to worse. Sulking, Lu Han reaches up to physically pry Chanyeol’s hand from his face.

“He’s dead,” Lu Han says, petulant and defensive. “He fucked up and now he’s dead. If he couldn’t hold his own, he didn’t deserve to live.”

“Your little obsession killed him!” Taemin yells, the first words he’s spoken to Lu Han in days, and they’re shriller than they should be, Taemin’s voice cracking as he leaps to his feet. “You won’t tell us what happened, but you don’t have to! You killed him! You’re obsessed with that fucker from Eleven, and Jongin tried to humor you, and now he’s  _ dead _ .”

“He’s dead because he didn’t trust that I knew what I’m doing,” Lu Han retorts. “I didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t have. Not one of our own.”

“How the fuck are we supposed to know that?” Taemin snarls back, fingers curling into fists at his sides. If he really wanted to attack, Lu Han thinks, he would grab a weapon of some sort. He doesn’t really want a fight. He’s angry though, practically shaking with it as he spits, “Sehun was right. You’re fucked up.”

Lu Han doesn’t care about the insult, but he looks to Chanyeol, waiting for him to protest the way he had with Sehun. But Chanyeol is strangely silent, doesn’t get offended on Lu Han’s behalf, and that does hurt in ways Lu Han hadn’t expected and doesn’t like.

He yanks out of Chanyeol’s hold, jerking away from him in disgust. He can feel the rage welling up now like blood out of a wound, fury dripping from him with every movement as he shoves at the hands Chanyeol reaches out for him. “Don’t  _ touch _ me!”

Chanyeol relents, letting go, and Lu Han’s jaw tenses, face contorting hideously. It’s not fair! Chanyeol knows he has nowhere else to go!

“I hate you!” he spits, worming his way back into Chanyeol’s arms to rake his nails in harsh red lines down his forearms, blood beading up in his wake. “I hate you! I hate you! Fuck you!”

“Lu Han’s not normal,” Chanyeol agrees over Lu Han’s head, voice tight with pain, “but it’s not his fault. Just let me explain.”

“You can’t explain that,” Taemin argues. Lu Han can’t see him, but he sounds hateful, disgusted, and it makes something sick rise up in Lu Han’s gut.

He feels horrible, wrong, bad. It’s so awful, and he hisses and digs his fingers in harder and claws at Chanyeol’s skin like he’s trying to dig his way down to the bone, gouging it open until he hears Chanyeol grunt with pain and feels the boy grabbing his hands, peeling them away and squeezing hard enough that Lu Han feels his bones creak.

He screams, tossing his head back with it, thrashing and angry, and then goes half limp, turning into weakly protesting deadweight in Chanyeol’s hold.

“I hate you,” he says again, more like a sigh now. He tugs loosely at his arms, but Chanyeol squeezes his hands until Lu Han is gasping in pain, and Lu Han gives in and, abruptly, begins to giggle.

Even he’s not quite sure why at first, the laughter startling him and making him giggle harder, hysteria overwhelming him in a way that doesn’t make sense until the sound of a cannon goes off a few moments later like a premonition he’d forgotten about until it happened. His giggles turn to full blown laughter, and he wrenches his hands hard in Chanyeol’s grasp, trying to drag them to his mouth before he finally just gives up and lays there, laughing so hard that he can hardly breath.

Finally, between fits of laughter and gasps for air, he hears Taemin say, “Okay. Explain it to me.”

—

Chanyeol was given to Lu Han when he was eighteen. Some people might have argued that it was the other way around, that Lu Han had been given to Chanyeol, and the shaky pretense of control that Chanyeol exerts over Lu Han might have supported that, but it wasn’t true. Perhaps they would have liked it to be — someone as dangerous as Lu Han shouldn’t be allowed to do as he pleased — but the facts were, Chanyeol was Lu Han’s. He was Lu Han’s handler, someone to keep him somewhat in line, but Lu Han was not his weapon. Lu Han was a weapon, but he was not Chanyeol’s.

Still, if only for that pretense of control, they gave Chanyeol to Lu Han like he was a present, wrapped up in a pretty bow.

They had approached Chanyeol years before, impressed by his test scores, his psychological exams. He was naturally talented, smart and skilled, and he was personable, made friends easily, but his test showed a propensity for selflessness, dedication. He had a high pain tolerance, a high threshold for stress, a moderate libido but a low priority for it. His weapon choice spoke of a certain distance between himself and the people he hurt, but he had no problems in physical fights, didn’t cringe away from causing pain, just shrugged it off and murmured, “I do what I have to.”

He was everything they were looking for, and from the time he was thirteen, they pushed him through the ranks, his dedication carrying him through three years of schooling in less than two, until he was just barely sixteen years old and being pulled into a room, told to have his bow at the ready and extra arrows hooked between the fingers of his bow hand, ready to fire off two, three, four arrows the moment they told them to start, and be prepared to hurt his opponent in any way he had to or risk being hurt or even killed.

When they told him to go, he snapped his bow up, firing as fast as he could and hissing as a knife sliced over the outside of his arm, opening a gash on his forearm and upsetting the path of the knife that would have sunk into his chest had be not brought his bow up so quickly. Bleeding, he notched another arrow, fired off two more arrows within a few seconds, and listened as his opponent started to scream, thrashing wildly, an arrow through his arm and into the wall, two more knocked into the outsides of his shoulders, painful to dig out, but ultimately superficial wounds.

Chanyeol watched the boy yank against the arrows, choking out noises of pain and whines of panic around growls of, “Fuck you! Fuck you! I’ll slit your fucking throat! I’ll slice you open and cut your heart out!”

And Lu Han hated him at first, spat threats and tore himself half open in his attempts to reach Chanyeol and hurt him. Chanyeol was terrified.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked the people who had come to see how their experiment was working. “Why is he like this?”

And the answer he was given was far from the comforting one. “He just is.”

Over time, Chanyeol had learned that that was false. Lu Han wasn’t just like this.

Lu Xian had worked in the developmental weapons department, and when she was chosen for the experiments, she was more than willing. But then her first son was stillborn along with the two after him. The next one didn’t last the night. The fifth lived almost a week, and they were getting ready to give up when the last pregnancy took. When Lu Han was born, they give him a month to live.

But Lu Han had surpassed all hopes except one. The genetics they had so carefully manipulated were wrong. They had taken, but they were mangled, and no one was sure why until they realized that years of working with experimental weapons meant that Lu Xian’s radiation levels were almost disturbingly high. In a developing fetus, that radiation had twisted things. Her dead babies had all had organ failures before they were even born. Lu Han was her miracle child.

They found the brain tumor when he was three, went in, and took it out. Despite everything, Lu Han’s tests were good. He was developed, intelligent, enjoyed playing games that involved violence. The excised the tumor from his frontal lobe, and went on about their business, seeing no change in Lu Han. He was still intelligent, still eager for violence. Except whatever they had done to him, Lu Han’s impulse control never developed. He was obsessive, childish, went into fits when he was denied what he wanted.

Lu Han was “just like that” because they had fucked up, and there was nothing to be done when their prodigy failed to develop correctly except to try and moderate it. They reminded him of his place frequently, drilled his status into his head until the idea that he was a weapon controlled his actions in ways that he himself could not.

Lu Han wanted to sleep until noon, but Lu Han was a weapon, and weapons needed to be practiced with. Lu Han wanted to go drink bubble tea every day, but Lu Han was a weapon and weapons needed to be honed, physically perfect.

But Lu Han also wanted to hurt people, and weapons were allowed to hurt people. He was vicious, angry, and so they gave him something to hurt. Someone to hurt. And when Lu Han whimpered that he wanted someone to hurt him — “Weapons are supposed to like pain. Weapons are all about pain. Please, I need it. I’m a weapon. I need it.” — Chanyeol did that for him too.

Chanyeol was given to Lu Han when he was eighteen and Chanyeol was a boy of sixteen controlling Lu Han in the only way he could be controlled. He sold himself, body and soul, to the art of keeping Lu Han okay, and he fucked Lu Han in ways that no one should ever touch another human being, let Lu Han hurt him and hurt Lu Han back in ways that made his stomach turn. He did everything to keep Lu Han under control.

And then they arrived in the Capitol and Lu Han saw something he wanted more than anything else he had ever wanted, and Chanyeol had no way to convince Lu Han otherwise, because Lu Han was a weapon, and weapons were supposed to hurt people.

And Lu Han wanted nothing more than to hurt Xiumin, so much so that Chanyeol could do nothing but let him and try to keep them alive in the process.

—

“I’m sorry,” he tells Taemin, when he finishes explaining, Lu Han still giggling occasionally in his lap as Chanyeol pets his hair, tugging hard enough to hurt when Lu Han falls too quiet for his liking. “They should have told you, before you came. We should have told you.”

“It doesn’t make it okay,” Taemin says, still trembling slightly, though his hands are loose at his sides now. “My brother is dead because of him.”

“I should have gone with him,” Chanyeol admits. “I know him. I know that when he wants something like that, he gets it. But impulsive or not, Lu Han isn’t stupid. He knows what he’s doing. Whatever he did, it was calculated.”

“I killed his One,” Lu Han giggles from Chanyeol’s lap, turning over to nuzzle into Chanyeol’s thigh and rubbing his face there like a cat, or at least like he’s forgotten that Chanyeol isn’t the one whose legs are decorated in knife marks. “You should have seen Xiumin’s face. He was so upset.”

Chanyeol pulls Lu Han’s hair again to shut him up, sending Lu Han into another cascade of giggles.

Taemin’s mouth presses into a flat line, whitening from the pressure. “Can he stop that?” he asks, and he directs it to Chanyeol instead of Lu Han, seemingly trying to ignore Lu Han. He already seems to barely be keeping it together when he snaps, “Just because he can’t control himself doesn’t mean he has to be a dick.”

Chanyeol shakes his head slowly. “Weapons kill people. The only way to make Lu Han reconcile that was to take away his sense of morality. When people die, they’re just… dead. In his head, once you’re dead, it’s just… over. You don’t matter anymore. If we’d let him kill Sehun, he wouldn’t even have given him a second thought afterwards.”

“So he doesn’t even  _ care _ ,” Taemin says, strain in his voice that makes it very clear that this bit of information isn’t something that Taemin particularly cares to know.

“It’s not that he doesn’t care. He liked Jongin,” Chanyeol says. “He just… he doesn’t understand that he should be sad that he’s gone. Even if I died, he’d be irritated that he didn’t have someone to hurt him anymore. He wouldn’t mourn me. I know that. He liked Jongin. He just… doesn’t have the capability to mourn him.”

Taemin’s jaw tenses. “That’s… that’s fucked up,” he says. “God, they fucked him up so bad.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol says quietly. “Yeah they did. If he wasn’t so… so him…”

“I’d feel sorry for him,” Taemin fills in when it becomes clear that Chanyeol’s not going to finish his sentence.

Chanyeol nods slowly, petting Lu Han’s head until Lu Han’s giggling subsides and he blinks up at Chanyeol curiously. When Chanyeol doesn’t tug on his hair immediately, his smile folds into a pout, and he sits up, wriggling out of Chanyeol’s hold.

“I killed his One,” he says, like he hasn’t heard any of that last conversation even though it’s clear that he has. He just doesn’t care. What they did to him doesn’t matter. He’s a weapon; they were allowed to forge him however they wanted so long as he came out strong.

“We heard you,” Taemin says, voice still tight, but he’s still talking directly to Lu Han, which is something of an improvement.

Lu Han lolls his head to one side to blink condescendingly at him, irritated by Taemin’s lack of understanding. “I killed his One,” Lu Han repeats again, speaking slower now. “He’s hurt. He’s angry. He’ll come for me soon, and then I get to hurt him.”

“If he’s a part of that camp though—” Taemin starts.

Lu Han grits his teeth. “Why don’t you and Jongin get it?”

Taemin tenses like Lu Han has just stabbed him, inhaling hard and sharp, eyes widening. Beside him, Chanyeol grimaces, shaking his head, though at which one of them, Lu Han has no idea.

“Trust me,” Lu Han says before Taemin can start getting mad again. “I killed his One because it was just the two of them. If Jongin had left well enough alone, if he hadn’t tried to go and make sure I had done my job right, he’d still be alive.

"I killed his One because now that he’s dead, Xiumin will come for revenge. Just Xiumin. He won’t bring anyone else. I’ve killed everyone he’s tried to protect now; he won’t bring anyone else. He won’t want to let me hurt anyone else. The best way to shield people is to keep them away from the weapon.” He smiles, almost beatifically. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing. I know how to hurt him. I’m supposed to hurt him.”

“We trust you,” Chanyeol says, though he’s looking meaningfully at Taemin rather than Lu Han. “If you’re sure it will just be him, then we’ll get ready for him to come.”

Lu Han snaps his head around, smile widening to the point where he’s all but baring his teeth. “He’s mine. I get to hurt him. He’s _ mine _ .”

“I know,” Chanyeol says, reaching out for Lu Han and letting out a breath when Lu Han allows him to tug him in by the arm, not ripping his arm away from Chanyeol’s hold. Chanyeol tugs him in, letting out a harsher breath when Lu Han turns his head and buries his face in Chanyeol’s shoulder, muffling his words as he begins humming to himself again.

Chanyeol cups the back of his head, petting his hair until Lu Han opens his mouth wide enough to fit some of Chanyeol’s skin between his teeth and begin biting down hard enough to make Chanyeol flinch. He lets go, nosing at the spot, and relents. He doesn’t really need to hurt Chanyeol right now. He’ll be able to hurt Xiumin to his heart’s content very soon.

—

It’s a familiar noise that wakes Lu Han. There’s a wet, squishing sound, and then a watery gurgling like someone drowning, and for a moment Lu Han thinks that he’s having a good dream. Then the reality snaps him awake and Lu Han is up in a second, fingers closing around his knives, eyes roving the clearing. He looks first to Chanyeol, already notching an arrow to his bow beside him, and Chanyeol looks back at him in the dark, eyes wide and mouth pushed into a firm line.

Lu Han’s own mouth curves into an open smile as he looks around, glee painted on his features. It’s time now.

And he was right after all. The knives Xiumin holds are exact replicas of the one that Lu Han had used to slit Lay’s throat, the one that he had thrown into Tao’s stomach. Maybe it’s the same one. Lu Han hadn’t been keeping that perfect of track of his weapons, and the thought that maybe he had used that knife to slit Lay’s throat and then tossed it deep into Tao’s belly, only for Xiumin to prize it free and bring it with him now…

God, Lu Han doesn’t know if it’s true, but he hopes. He hopes. It would be so beautiful, so poetic. Lu Han wants to believe, even if it’s not true, because the knife that Xiumin is twisting into Taemin’s corpse pulls a wild-eyed gleam to Lu Han’s eyes.

“Oh look,” Lu Han purrs, “It’s the cutie.”

Beside him, Chanyeol tenses, bow still notched, not lowering, but the tension on the string eases up a little, even as his eyes dart around the trees, like he’s waiting for someone else to come through. But no one else is coming. The trees are silent. Xiumin is alone, just like Lu Han said he would be.

Lu Han smiles, feeling a little breathless. “What?” he coos, adoring, eyes searching Xiumin’s face, “Out of lovers for me to kill?”

Xiumin’s hiss of rage makes Lu Han’s smile widen until he’s all but beaming, bright and sharp as he bites into his lower lip. Xiumin sways slightly, from side to side, the way he had so long ago on that stage, only now it’s not repressed. He’s shifting his weight, rocking from side to side, jaw locked and staring dead-eyed at Lu Han. “Fuck you,” he spits, all rawness, all intensity. He’s cracked through, barely holding himself together as he cracks out, “Fuck you. I’ll kill you.”

Lu Han barely contains his moan. He wants to breath that he’s looking forward to it, that he wants Xiumin to go ahead and try so that Lu Han can finish breaking him to pieces. But he’s aiming to hurt here still, and it’s better than he keeps pushing, keeps taunting.

“Well,” he sighs, pretending that he’s bored despite the fact that this is the most excited he’s been in such a long time, “I guess you’ll have to do this time. Our numbers are kind of dwindling in here.”

He casts a glance past Xiumin to Taemin’s body, to the blood leaking from the wound in his chest, the blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. Some sentry he was, honestly; he hadn’t even actively tried to wake either of them before he died. Or maybe Xiumin really is just that good. Lu Han is practically dying to find out, all but salivating over it, just waiting for Xiumin to attack.

It’s a long few seconds, both of them playing a waiting game that they don’t entirely know how to play, and then they both lose it at the same time. Xiumin leaps for him at the same time that Lu Han flings himself forward and they go tumbling to the ground in a pile of limbs, knives clanging together between them, a spark snapping off from the clash of metal and sizzling uselessly on Lu Han’s skin for a moment, tearing a laugh out of him. Or perhaps that’s just the fact that he’s finally here, tangled up with Xiumin, after so, so long.

He twists his legs, knotting them together with Xiumin’s and then flips them hard, landing himself firmly under Xiumin in a way that clearly shocks him until gravity drops Xiumin’s a little further down, jarring their weapons away from each other and sending them slicing through each other’s sides.

Xiumin grits his teeth. Lu Han arches his back and whimpers out a moan.

Xiumin rolls off him almost disappointingly fast, ripping his knife from Lu Han’s skin and bracing himself to attack again while Lu Han giggles and sits up, tugging another knife out of his belt until he has one in each hand and a smile on his lips. “Aren’t you having fun, cutie?” Lu Han asks, shifting to an attacking stance in a way that pulls at his newest wound and makes him sigh happily. “I thought you’d enjoy this.”

“Fuck you,” Xiumin spits again, shaking with it. “You killed Lay. You killed Tao. You’ve taken everything from me. I’m going to tear you apart.”

“Oh, please,” Lu Han sighs, not even a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Go ahead and try. And when you fail, I’m going to go to your little camp, and I’m going to kill every one of them, one by one, and you won’t be there to protect any of them anymore.”

Xiumin snarls. It’s not a human sound. It’s hardly even an animalistic sound. It’s beautiful.

Lu Han sighs out a noise that he doesn’t even get to finish before Xiumin is leaping for him again, and this time Lu Han manages to roll them so that it’s him on top, and even as Xiumin’s knife drags down his leg, Lu Han gets his knees on top of Xiumin’s wrists and shoves his weight onto them, pinning Xiumin to the ground and smiling as he lays his knives to Xiumin’s shoulders and drags, splitting inches of skin on his upper arms before Xiumin howls and bucks him off, sending Lu Han sprawling.

Xiumin is on him at once, knife at Lu Han’s throat, splitting skin, so very close to causing real damage that Lu Han’s breath catches, a shiver curling through him, a whimper stalling in his throat. And then he manages to twist his knife up and into Xiumin’s arm, making him spasm and recoil with a shout, knife clattering to the ground.

He leaves blood dripping at Lu Han’s throat and a laugh bubbling up behind it, and Lu Han tumbles forward, reaching for Xiumin and getting him under him, knocking Xiumin’s knife away and dropping one of his own until he’s perched over Xiumin with just one knife in hand.

Xiumin squirms hard, spitting curses, but Lu Han has a better hold on him now, better angling as he leans down, dropping his mouth near Xiumin’s ear to moan into it. He’s close enough that his breath rustles Xiumin’s hair, lips just brushing his skin, and Lu Han takes a moment to appreciate it, how close he is now to everything he’s wanted for so long.

“Be good, dearest,” he chides, and Xiumin lets out a pained sound at Lu Han’s pet name, one that makes Lu Han shiver. A drop of blood from Lu Han’s throat drips down onto Xiumin’s skin, and Lu Han rocks his hips down.

Xiumin cringes at the realization that Lu Han is half hard from this, but it’s so good. Lu Han wants more.

“You’re fucking sick,” Xiumin chokes out, and for the first time Lu Han has ever heard those insults, there’s no fear. There’s anger, resignation, pain, but there is no fear. Lu Han tilts his head, listening closer, wondering if he’s wrong, but there’s still nothing there when Xiumin grits out, “You don’t even have a heart for me to rip out, do you?”

Lu Han blinks a few times, and then smiles sweetly. “Would it matter?” he asks. “If it worries you that much, I can just take yours.”

Xiumin tenses, jaw clenching, hands trembling. Lu Han sighs and pulls back just enough to pet along his jawline with his free hand, ignoring it when Xiumin tries to take a snap at him.

“Or do you have it left to give it to me?” he asks, tilting his head. “Did you give it away to all your lovers that I killed? How mean. Didn’t leave a piece left for me.”

Xiumin snarls, wordless and hateful.

Lu Han clicks his tongue. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? They’re dead now, and I have you all to myself.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you. You  _ killed them _ ,” Xiumin chokes out, and there’s a new sound in there. It’s still not fear, but Xiumin sounds so sad. Lu Han was right; he’s cracked him deep, and there’s very little left to do to shatter him.

“Of course I did.” Lu Han smiles like a shark. “I’m a weapon. I’m made to kill people. That’s what I do. But you’re the one who failed to protect them, aren’t you?”

Xiumin grits his teeth, jerking up against Lu Han. “Fuck you!” he growls, and Lu Han purrs and pats his cheek, turning his head and kissing Xiumin’s jaw, lips touching for a moment before he sinks his teeth into the skin there, deep enough to draw blood and make Xiumin howl with rage, biting out another “Fuck you!”

“Don’t tempt me, cutie,” Lu Han teases, rocking down his hips again, and Xiumin stiffens so hard that Lu Han can’t help but giggle, readjusting his knife in his hand and bringing the tip down to rest in the hollow of Xiumin’s throat. “You couldn’t stop me, you know. You couldn’t save them. What makes you think you can save yourself?”

It’s more taunting, Lu Han practically a cat playing with a mouse, but Xiumin doesn’t fight back. He slumps, looking at Lu Han.

There’s blood oozing from his jaw. There’s blood dripping from his arm and side. There’s blood in droplets along his skin from where Lu Han is steadily dripping on him. Xiumin looks wrecked, defeated. He looks broken.

“Just kill me,” he says, but there’s no desperation to it. There’s nothing. There’s nothing at all there.

Lu Han’s smile fades. Is this what Xiumin broken looks like? It can’t be. It’s not right! It’s not fair!

“No!” he whines, eyes roving over Xiumin’s face, searching for more. Searching for what he wants, what he’s always wanted from Xiumin. “No! You’re supposed to fight me for it!”

Xiumin looks at him for a long moment and then turns his head away, letting out a bitter noise that Lu Han can’t even qualify as a laugh. “Good. I’m glad you’re not getting the satisfaction.”

Lu Han whines, peeling up off of Xiumin, looking down at him in offended horror. No. No! It’s not right! It’s all wrong, and he hates this. He hates this!

He’s keening, desperately, and he drops his knife to the side, fingers curling into claws as he scratches at Xiumin, ripping his shirt and tearing at his skin, anger blossoming in him. “No! No, you’re mine! You’re supposed to fight me! You’re not allowed to just give up!”

Xiumin doesn’t even look at him, just keeps his head turned to one side.

“Just kill me,” he repeats numbly, wresting a half scream of agony out of Lu Han who wants to make Xiumin respond, but Xiumin’s anger has all gone, and it’s so wrong on him. There’s nothing of the fierce boy Lu Han had wanted back in the Capitol, through all of this. There’s a shell, and Lu Han hates it.

He needs more. This isn’t Xiumin. This isn’t the person he’s supposed to kill. This is practically a training dummy, nonresponsive, uninteresting.

“No!” Lu Han repeats, reaching up to force Xiumin to look at him, and their eyes meet for a moment. There’s something there. There has to be. Xiumin’s dull look isn’t the reality of this. Xiumin shuts his eyes, refusing to look at Lu Han, refusing to fight him, refusing to respond.

“Fine!” Lu Han growls, angry, casting out for something, anything that will still hurt Xiumin. “Fine, if you want to die so badly, then you can stay alive.”

Behind him, Chanyeol makes a noise, and Lu Han thinks that should be a sign, but he’s too focused on the way that Xiumin just flinched, ever so slightly.

“I’ll make you watch while I go back to your camp and kill the rest of them, one by one. I’ll make you sit there and watch, and we’ll count how many of them scream for you to help them while you can’t,” Lu Han goes on, anger fueling something vicious and gleeful in him.

Xiumin’s no longer limp. His eyes are open. He looks, finally, properly, terrified. He looks angry and hateful and scared, and Lu Han could get off to that look forever.

“I’ll keep you alive, and I’ll drag you out of here and keep you so I can cut you open whenever I like,” he says, voice sharper than any knife, “And I’ll make you watch them die. They’re filming all of this, all of the games, and I can show you over and over again the way I slit your Lay’s throat, the way I stabbed your Tao in the stomach, the way he must have died, slowly and hurting, and you couldn’t do a thing to stop it, and I’ll fuck you the whole time until you’re so used to it that you can even come while watching them die.”

Lu Han smiles. Or… no, it’s not quite a smile. It’s something harsher, showing all of his teeth, something deadly and carnivorous. Xiumin is shaking underneath him, whiter than a sheet, properly reactive now.

He giggles. “You should have just done what you were supposed to, cutie,” he says, leaning down and pressing a facsimile of a kiss to Xiumin’s lips, earning a bite for his trouble that makes him moan and makes Xiumin retreat in horror. Lu Han turns to Chanyeol with a smile. “Channie, we’ve got some rope, right? It’s no good if he runs off before I can properly hurt him.”

—

The ropes are stained properly red soon, days of blood soaking into them staining them a pretty color. Beneath them, Xiumin’s wrists are raw and chafed from where he alternates between struggling violently and going limp. When it hurts too much, he tends to just go numb, the way he had before, but Lu Han knows how to pull it out of him now. All it takes is for him to twist the knife, metaphorical as much as physical, and lean in to whisper things about how he can’t wait to hear Xiumin scream for them as they die, how he wonders how Xiumin would look, covered in their blood as he fucks him.

This seems to scare Xiumin most, any hint that Lu Han makes towards rape. He wouldn’t do it, but Xiumin doesn’t need to know that. And one day, one day he can get Xiumin begging for it. He knows how, after all.

He passes his time cutting Xiumin to shreds and ignoring Chanyeol’s looks. It’s just the two of them now, both of the twins dead at Xiumin’s hands, and that feels oddly apropos in a way. He likes to remind Xiumin of that too, likes to purr into his ear about the way it feels because he knows it all too well.

“Their blood was still warm, right?” he asks, nuzzling into Xiumin’s neck, just behind his ear. Xiumin doesn’t answer because Luhan is trailing a knife down the right side of his jaw, decorating the curve of it with the thinnest of cuts. He’d learned his lesson about being too rough; Xiumin shakes and hates more when it’s like this, when Lu Han is gentle with him.

Not that Xiumin ever answers beyond expletives, beyond hateful words and the occasional, hidden sob. Lu Han has learned exactly how to pull those sounds out too, but he doesn’t dare do it too often in case it starts to lose effect. He satisfied himself with the way Xiumin is shaking now, trembling with built up rage and making Lu Han’s lines uneven. Between them, Lu Han can feel his hands tugging uselessly as his bonds, bumping into Lu Han’s stomach and then recoiling, almost in horror that he touched Lu Han.

Lu Han giggles when this happens again, lifting himself a little higher, adjusting himself so that one the next attempt, Xiumin’s hands will bump into his erection, because that choked noise of horror is always the most satisfying.

Right now though, he flicks the blade out at Xiumin’s chin, finishing the cut, and then hums while he tries to think of a new place to cut. For the moment, he rests the blade on Xiumin’s lips, staining them red with his own blood and feeling him gag slightly. Lu Han smiles.

“Did it splash up, get in your mouth like this?” he asks, going back to reminding him about the death he’s caused. “You can still taste it sometimes, right? Warm, thick. It tastes like metal, doesn’t it? I used to suck on pennies when I was young just for hint of that taste, but it was never right. It never tasted like this. Never tasted like, well—“

He leans forward, tilts Xiumin’s head back so that it’s buried into the side of Lu Han’s throat, and licks a stripe up the cut he’s just made. Xiumin’s teeth catch in his throat quickly, biting down hard enough to break skin, an instinctive retaliation that makes Lu Han whimper, high and sweet with pleasure. He waits until Xiumin’s mouth is too full of blood for him to breath properly before he pushes him away, fingers coming to trace his newest injury and smiling.

“See? It’s good isn’t it?” he asks, uncaring that he’s hurt. Xiumin shudders and yanks at his bonds again, hands twisting and tugging until they bump against Lu Han’s cock, and then he falls abruptly still with a choking noise, tugging away so hard that he tips forward and Lu Han lets him go, falling forward into the dirt.

He smiles, curves himself over Xiumin’s back, nuzzles at his bare shoulders, shirt long since cut to shreds to give Lu Han a canvas to work with. Lu Han licks at the sweaty skin, lapping at it, pressing kisses to it until he hears Xiumin’s breath hitch in panic, and then lifts his knife to Xiumin’s shoulder and presses in with a slow unyielding pressure, sinking it deeper, millimeter by millimeter until Xiumin screams for him, a low rough noise muffled by the earth.

Lu Han knows what he’s thinking about that keeps him this responsive. “You fucked him like this, didn’t you? Your stupid little bitch of a One. I was there, you know. I watched him beg for you while you shoved his face into the dirt like this. It was pretty, you know. I liked watching you cause pain. But I could do it better. I can do it so much better, can’t I?”

Xiumin chokes on something like a sob, harsh enough to make his voice crack. Lu Han twists his knife to hear the noise keen up into a wail, giggling and kissing the mark when he’s done, not withdrawing the knife, even though it nicks his lips. It’s a familiar pleasure, and he licks at it, at the taste of Xiumin’s blood on his own injury, and smiles.

“Tell me I hurt you better than that, and we can be done for today, cutie,” Lu Han says, knowing that Xiumin won’t. Xiumin hates giving him what he wants. It makes it so much better to make him.

Lu Han’s knife slices a pattern of straight lines directly over Xiumin’s shoulder blades, cutting straight down to the bone, and Xiumin gives him nothing until Lu Han rocks his hips into Xiumin’s ass, grinding his dick against him. Xiumin shakes at that, breathing speeding up, so Lu Han keeps doing it, just to scare him, lowering his mouth to Xiumin’s shoulder and licking at the blood as he goes, fitting his tongue into lines too narrow for it to properly fit, making Xiumin’s voice crack occasionally with pain.

It’s not until Lu Han fits his hands at Xiumin’s hips though, sliding beneath them teasingly to touch at his flaccid cock that Xiumin jerks properly in his grip and gasps, “Stop. Fuck, stop. Don’t do this, you sick fuck.”

Lu Han smiles. “You know what to tell me, pretty,” he says, the sound a little weird — his mouth is coated with blood, his lips tacky with it, and they stick, popping a little on the ‘p’ of one of the petnames he has bestowed to Xiumin. He licks them absently before adding, “We can stop whenever you want. Just be a good boy.”

Xiumin sobs, the noise so broken that it surprises even Lu Han, and then chokes out. “You hurt me worse. Stop. Stop.”

Lu Han frowns. “Better,” he corrects, irritable, biting Xiumin’s cut skin in admonition.

Xiumin shakes quietly, slumping. “You hurt me better,” he corrects, voice muffled, but Lu Han knows that’s as good as he’ll get for now. He can’t bear to deny Xiumin when his voice cracks on what is so very close to a whimper of, “Just stop.”

Lu Han sighs and pulls him up, nuzzling at him. “Not so hard, see? Good boy. One day we might even teach you how to say ‘please’.”

Xiumin sobs again, entirely out of proportion, and Lu Han files it away. Xiumin really should be more careful about giving him ammunition, he thinks, and then gets up to go clean his knives, leaving Chanyeol, patiently waiting, to bandage Xiumin up.

—

“I think it’s time to leave,” Chanyeol says conversationally, looking across the clearing from them, eyes caught in the far woods.

A cannon has just gone off, somewhere in the distance, and Lu Han is taking the opportunity to lean into Xiumin, head pillowed on his shoulder and breathing little murmurs of, “What if it’s one of your friends? What if it’s one of those from your little camp, and you’re sitting here, tied up, letting me cut you to shreds? What would they say? What would they say if they heard the things you say to me to get me to stop?”

Xiumin shivers weakly, but he’s having a hard day, and his head is dropped down, eyes closed. His breathing is choppy and pained. Lu Han is getting better at this. He’s learning, slowly, exactly how to make Xiumin give him what he wants.

Today, it’s the fact that Xiumin hasn’t had water in three days, and his lips are getting dry and cracked enough that when Lu Han kisses him, they split under the pressure, and Lu Han has caught Xiumin licking weakly a his own blood just for the sensation of liquid in his mouth. A little longer, and Lu Han will give him a way to get that, but right now he’s enjoying the weak desperation that Xiumin’s showing.

At Chanyeol’s words though, Lu Han looks up, a frown on his lips. “I’m not done. I haven’t killed them all yet.”

“We will, before we go,” Chanyeol says, “but the numbers are going down. There’s only about a dozen of us left. Too much longer and someone’s going to get out, no matter how well we guard the exit.”

Lu Han sighs and turns his head, nuzzling lovingly into Xiumin’s throat and making him groan quietly. It’s hardly a rasp, his throat is so dry, and Lu Han smiles and nuzzles harder just to hear Xiumin cough out a curse.

“What do you think, cutie?” he asks, “Ready to go have some fun with your friends?”

He finishes the words by wrapping his mouth around Xiumin’s earlobe and sucking. Xiumin flinches away, head swinging up, mouth pressing hard enough that the cracks in his lips ooze blood. Lu Han is tempted to lick it off, but Xiumin beats him to it, lapping at his own lips. He must be thirstier than Lu Han had anticipated. Lu Han giggles, nipping at his ear again and hearing Xiumin gasp hard enough that he chokes weakly on the minute amount of blood in his mouth.

“Fuck you,” he groans, voice hardly even a rasp.

Lu Han tilts his head. “What was that?” he prompts, one finger curling under Xiumin’s chin to tip Xiumin’s head up. “I didn’t quite catch it.”

Xiumin glares at him, teeth baring in a snarl that makes Lu Han shiver at the sight of Xiumin’s teeth clenched behind the crimson of his split lips. He’s still beautiful, and Lu Han gives in to his earlier urge, leaning in and dragging his tongue along Xiumin’s lower lip. It ends with him getting bitten, of course, but that’s alright, especially because he sees Xiumin swallowing desperately around Lu Han’s blood, so thirsty that he’s willing to go for even that.

Lu Han licks his own lip, lapping at his own blood in consideration before turning to smile at Chanyeol. “I think you’re right, Channie. We’ll go tonight.”

Chanyeol looks at him for a long moment and then nods. “We’ll get ready to go soon then,” Chanyeol agrees and then adds, “Lu Han… be careful.”

Lu Han casts him a bored look. “Don’t worry so much, Channie. I’ve got it under control.” He pulls out a knife, turning back to Xiumin with a fond smile, “It’s always easier with a little bait.”

—

Xiumin is beautiful. Lu Han has to admit that like this, he’s even more stunning than usual, and Lu Han is proud of his own work. Aside from Xiumin’s split lips, Lu Han cuts the corner of his mouth slightly, just enough to make blood trickle down his chin in a thin stream that drips off his chin and splatters onto his chest.

His shirt has long since been ruined and discarded, but it’s almost better that way, and Lu Han cuts a long thin stripe down Xiumin’s chest, dragging from collarbones down along the guide formed by his muscles, bisecting Xiumin’s chest. He giggles when Xiumin makes a raspy keening noise at this, getting higher in pitch the lower Lu Han goes, but he stops just short of Xiumin’s pants, merely tracing the tip of the blade in scratchy lines along the waistband to hear Xiumin suck in tiny gasps.

He doesn’t need to cut him much more than that though. The rest of him is already covered in varying wounds from Lu Han’s knives, made over the last few days and at varying states of healing, but there’s enough blood that when Lu Han smears it over them, plenty of them look fresh. Lu Han renews a couple of them anyways, just because he can.

It’s almost right. Almost, but not quite, and Lu Han smiles as he winds his fingers into Xiumin’s hair, petting it back with sticky fingers that stain Xiumin’s hair crimson. Lu Han smiles gently.

“They’re going to run to you,” he murmurs, refuting Xiumin’s attempts to tug his head away by tightening his fingers, holding Xiumin where he is. “They’re going to try to save you, and they’re going to run right into the trap you’re helping us set. You’re going to be the reason they die, and you’re not going to be able to save a single one of them.”

Xiumin makes a noise like machinery grinding, metal clattering against each other, that much more believable for how raw Xiumin’s throat must be. It’s beautiful. His eyes are burning, hateful, and it’s so much better than the dead-eyed look he had once worn.

A little longer. If Xiumin keeps looking at him like this, Lu Han won’t be able to help himself.

“We should go soon,” he says offhandedly, not looking away from Xiumin. “Before the blood dries.”

Chanyeol makes an affirmative sound, and Lu Han hears him gathering his supplies, hears the softest creak of Chanyeol’s bow as he restrings it. It’s such a familiar, gentle noise that Lu Han cranes his head back toward him, blinking at him in the dim light, and finds Chanyeol staring at him, at where Lu Han is braced over Xiumin’s lap to continue ruining him.

“Channie?” he asks, head tilting and voice sing-songing his name. But Chanyeol just shakes his head at him, standing and tossing his quiver over one shoulder. He drags a single arrow from it and notches it, holding it loose in the bow to allow him quick shots. Lu Han follows his lead, standing, though he doesn’t drag a weapon from his belt. Instead he heaves Xiumin to his feet, fingers curling into the ties that hold Xiumin’s hands behind his back, and presses flat against his back, nuzzling at him to make Xiumin stumble a few steps forward.

They trip through the woods this way, Xiumin too weak to protest, struggling with tired, obligatory jerks that do nothing but make Lu Han pause before easing him forward again with the power of Xiumin’s desire to pull away from him. Chanyeol keeps an eye out, an ear out, fingers steady on his bow, but there’s silence in the woods, almost eerily. Like the whole place understands the end this will come to before the night is over.

“Are you ready?” Lu Han asks, and Chanyeol glances at him with a kind of cursory interest, but Lu Han is lapping at Xiumin’s earlobe, a smile in his voice and his eyes as he coos, “I can’t wait to watch you watch them die.”

Xiumin jerks hard, elbowing Lu Han in the stomach hard enough that Lu Han has to muffle a too-loud giggle in the back of Xiumin’s shoulder. “I hope Kris catches you and rips your throat out,” Xiumin rasps, a hoarse whisper of sound that makes Lu Han want to lick the inside of his throat. “I hope he leaves you in so much pain that you can’t even scream.”

“You’re sweet,” Lu Han sighs, nosing at the crook of Xiumin’s neck to watch him shudder. It’s beautiful, and Lu Han licks at a little bit of drying blood, humming happily under his breath. “You taste sweet too.”

Xiumin lets out the same inarticulate noise that Lu Han has gotten so used to hearing from him, though it’s harsher now. Lu Han wants to lick it out of his mouth. Instead, he pushes him forward until Chanyeol halts them, looking around.

“Here,” he says, gesturing, and Lu Han looks around as well, realizing how very close they are to their goal. He smiles sweetly, guiding Xiumin to the base of a nearby tree and settling him there, dropping down into his lap for a kiss that Xiumin spasms away from hard enough to crack his head against the trunk behind him, making him moan in surprised pain.

“Careful,” Lu Han snaps, fingers tightening to fists in Xiumin’s shirt, dragging him forward again. “Nothing’s allowed to hurt you except me.”

Xiumin looks at him blankly and then lets out a rasp of laughter, tipping his head back against the trunk again, the thunk duller now, less forceful. Lu Han still frowns, fingers itching to rip Xiumin forward by the hair so he can make sure.

Chanyeol interrupts him before he can, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “Lu Han, we have to start.”

Lu Han pouts at him, but stands anyways, patting Xiumin’s cheek affectionately. “Don’t worry, pretty. We’re not going anywhere without you.”

He slips into the underbrush, slinking into the deep shadows and watching as Chanyeol does the same opposite, positioning himself to be able to aim through leaves and branches. Chanyeol lets out a long slow breath, pulling the string back, waiting.

Lu Han smiles, opens his mouth, and screams.

—

They come running even faster than Lu Han had been anticipating. He had thought that there would be restraint, but it’s far simpler than it should be. There’s no caution, no sense that anyone had thought what to do. There’s a scatter of noise, and then there are people yelling, screaming all over the place, and it’s so much. It’s more than it should be.

Something is wrong, but Lu Han can’t focus on that right now. Right now, all he can focus on is the boys who rush into the clearing.

“Chen, we can’t leave them—“ one of them whines, voice high and scared.

The other has his hand in a tight grip, pulling hard, sharp, breaths of, “We have to go! We have to—“

They both stop, suddenly, sharply. The first one looks like his arm might get tugged out of it’s socket with how abruptly he recoils, and Lu Han feels the smile slide over his face before he even hears the panic yelp of, “Xiumin-hyung!”

Faintly, ever so faintly, Lu Han hears the rasp of Xiumin choking out, “Baek.”

Oh, yes. Oh, god, yes. He all but moans, biting his own mouth shut to keep it inside, because that’s level of familiarity means that Lu Han wasn’t wrong. Xiumin knows this boy, and he’ll watch him die and Lu Han will make sure that Xiumin sees every second of it, every moment.

“Hyung, oh god, fuck, are you—” the boy who Xiumin called “Baek” cries out, rushing towards Xiumin without caution, jerking when he reaches the end of his metaphorical rope, arm jerking in the other’s hold, jarring him abruptly enough that he lets out a noise of surprised pain, eyes wide and wild. “Chen, let me go! I have to help him!”

“Baekyhun, stop! It’s not right,” Chen protests, looking scared, trying to tug Baekyhun back to him. “This isn’t right. Xiumin disappeared weeks ago!”

“What if he’s been hurt like this the whole time?” Baekhyun asks, struggling harder, tugging his fist against the circle of Chen’s fingers with enough force that it will likely leave bruises on them both. Or would, if the bruises would have time to form, but Lu Han has other plans.

Xiumin does too, struggling weakly, voice a broken cough, barely loud enough to be heard over the bickering, and not quite loud enough to be properly understood as he manages, “Baek, run.”

“Hyung,” Baekyhun says, twisting his arm hard enough to break the hold on it and stumbling awkwardly forward, overbalancing and tumbling to the ground in front of Xiumin. He scrambles up, half crawling towards Xiumin, either ignoring or misinterpreting Xiumin’s head shake. “Hyung, god, I thought— we all thought…”

“Baek, please,” Xiumin rasps, and Baekyhun is close enough now to hear, to stall at Xiumin’s words, confusing pinching his face and pulling his mouth into a frown as Xiumin tries his hardest to warn him away.

Well, they can’t have that, now can they? Lu Han steps forward, just enough for Baekhyun to hear the rustle of the leaves, the warning that something is coming. And he does hear, his head jerking up, fear in his eyes as Xiumin tries again, words a desperate sob of, “Baekyhun,  _ run _ .”

“Now, now, cutie,” Lu Han purrs as he slinks out of the underbrush, grinning as Baekyhun reels back, eyes wide and scared.

Lu Han’s more focused on Xiumin though, even now, the way his eyes are terrified and his arms are vibrating with how hard his hands are shaking. He’s pale with fear and fury, and it makes the blood and bruising on his skin stand out stark and vibrant. He’s gorgeous, and Lu Han likes the way he swallows hard and continuously, trying to work up the ability to speak properly, to get louder than his hoarse pleas.

Lu Han smiles and talks steadily over him. “Don’t spoil it now. Your job is to pull them in, not scare them off.”

Xiumin blanches, somehow going even paler, voice so rough as he gags, “ _ Don’t. _ ”

He knows well enough that that won’t stop Lu Han, never has. Sometimes, certain pleas will work, but they’re always the ones that kill Xiumin to say aloud, and this is far from one of them. This is one of the ones that would have Lu Han smiling and twisting the knife, but somehow Xiumin keeps asking like it will make any difference at all.

“Be a good boy,” Lu Han says, sauntering forward, watching as Baekhyun tries to scramble away from him and doesn’t make it more than a foot or two before Lu Han is standing over him, half an eye on him and most of it on Xiumin, watching his Eleven for a reaction as he murmurs, “I told you I was going to make you watch me kill them. You’ve known this was coming. Now sit still and keep your eyes open, and maybe I’ll give you a present afterwards.”

“Fuck you,” Xiumin chokes, but he can’t even get it all the way out, and he certainly can’t move himself to do anything at all to rescue Baekhyun as Lu Han kicks Baekhyun’s legs out from under him.

The boy crashes to the ground letting out a wailing yelp, and Lu Han smirks when he cries out after, a plea of, “hyung!” followed by an even more desperate, “Chen!”

Oh, yes, his little friend. Lu Han casts a glance over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow when he sees the boy standing there, frozen, hands shaking, eyes wide. He’s pale and stock still, every muscle of him lined with tension, braced to run and yet not.

He’s literally frozen with fear. That’s a new one. It’s almost cute. Not as cute as Xiumin’s useless struggling, but cute nonetheless.

“What, do you want to watch too?” Lu Han asks, smiling sweetly. “I’m already putting on a show for Xiumin, but you can watch too if you’d like.”

Chen croaks out some kind of noise that Lu Han has never heard before, startlingly high-pitched despite it’s raspiness, and stumbles half a step back, eyes locked on Lu Han. Lu Han winks at him and then goes to his knees, bending himself over Baekhyun’s body, knife sliding into his hand like it belongs there. Baekyhun screams before it even touches his skin.

“Now, now,” Lu Han reprimands, rolling his eyes, hand tightening on the hilt of his knife, “don’t be so impatient.”

The blood wells up prettily under the tip of his knife as he pierces the skin, and Baekhyun yells out in a voice that makes Lu Han grin, a howl like an injured animal. He giggles at it, adjusts himself so that he is sitting on Baekhyun’s chest, compressing his lungs and making it harder for him to scream, and then he presses the knife into the center of Baekhyun’s chest, sharp and fast, bone breaking under the pressure, blood splashing onto his hands. Baekyhun gurgles weakly.

Xiumin lets out a tiny sob, scared and unhappy, and Lu Han all but preens. But Xiumin isn’t the only one making noises, and Lu Han looks around when he hears the scream of, “You  _ bastard _ !”

Chen is regaining his ability to move, it seems, and he’s fished what looks to be the top half of a spear out of his belt, just enough of the pole left for him to wrap his hand around, the tip pointed. He holds it inexpertly, as liable to stab himself as someone else, and his hands shake. He’s got no idea what he’s doing, and Lu Han cocks his head at him with interest.

“I don’t think I ever had a father,” Lu Han muses absently, twisting his knife and listening as Baekhyun gags out something too wet to be a gasp, blood beginning to froth on his lips. “I guess that makes it hard for my mother be married.”

“You fucker!” Chen shouts, and suddenly his body is a blur of movement, face twisted into a snarl of hatred, teeth bared into a clench of rage. Lu Han beams, raising a single eyebrow, unmoving as Chen bolts closer. Even Xiumin sucks in a gasp at how very close Chen is getting, though his is probably more anticipation than anything, and honestly that stings a little.

Lu Han scowls at him, upset, and then turns back to Chen who is, as expected, stumbling hard, crashing to the ground. The arrow sticks out of his back, though not by much, only a few inches left free. He doesn’t move, not even to breath, not even when Lu Han testingly twists his knife in Baekhyun’s chest again and lets his wet sob tumble from his lips in sticky red bubbles.

“You shouldn’t strain yourself, Channie,” Lu Han says with a giggle, looking for his friend who has already drawn another arrow and is notching it, adjusting its position on the string. “You need to save your strength.”

“You’re welcome,” Chanyeol replies, staring at the body on the ground as if waiting to see if it will spring back to life. It’s caution more than distrust of Lu Han’s ability to see these things, but it still makes Lu Han bristle a little, tilting his head.

“He’s dead,” he says plainly, speaking mostly to Chanyeol, but his eyes drift to Xiumin in anticipation of his response. “And this one will be too, soon.”

He jerks the knife in emphasis, pushing it in harder, and Baekhyun makes a soft noise, wet, like something is being pushed up his throat, something viscous and sticky. Lu Han imagines it’s blood. It might be part of his lungs. It’s hard to tell when Baekhyun gags around trembling inhales without ever exhaling.

“Baek,” Xiumin croaks weakly from behind Lu Han, and then again, “Baek. Baekhyun.”

There’s no answer. There’s no reason why there should be. Baekhyun sucks in air again, trying his hardest, and Lu Han pulls away the knife, finally, wiping it clean on Baekhyun’s shirt as he watches Baekhyun drag in oxygen only for it to froth the blood seeping up out of his chest. Lu Han pats the spot none-to-gently, and Baekhyun’s hand twitches and then falls still. There’s no other reaction.

“See?” Lu Han asks, tipping his head to smile at Xiumin. “I told you.”

Xiumin rasps out a noise, broken and scared, sounding more like he’s choking than sobbing. Lu Han peels himself off of Baekhyun’s body with a smile, stepping over to Xiumin instead, dropping himself down into his lap. Xiumin shudders, jerking a little, but he’s not strong enough to knock Lu Han away, and Lu Han simply smiles and leans in for a kiss, pecking at the corner of Xiumin’s lips. They’re almost painfully dry, enough that they scratch at Lu Han’s mouth, and Lu Han giggles against his mouth and relents.

“Thirsty, cutie?” he asks, stroking a hand down Xiumin’s face and watching the boy shudder. He starts to shake his head, but Lu Han taps at his lips, making Xiumin cringe away as the pressure breaks break’s the skin and Xiumin’s mouth starts bleeding yet again. Xiumin’s tongue darts out so quickly to lap it up that Lu Han giggles.

“Pretty,” he sighs, nosing at Xiumin’s jaw. “Here, I’ll get you something to drink.”

Lifting his hand, Lu Han drags the knife across his palm, blood oozing out at once, and lifts it to Xiumin’s mouth. The blood drips onto Xiumin’s lips, thick and sticky, and Xiumin jerks back so hard that Lu Han thinks he might give himself whiplash, but his mouth falls open and his tongue darts out, and he licks it away as fast as he did his own.

Lu Han smiles, leaning in, pressing his bleeding hand to the seam of Xiumin’s mouth, and after a long moment, Xiumin lets out a sob, less dry than it has been, and Lu Han feels the suction as he starts drinking. It’s a sign of just how much he’s ruined Xiumin, and Lu Han all but moans at the feeling of Xiumin gulping blood from his palm, willing to put up with even this so long as he gets a drink.

When Lu Han pulls away his hand, he hears Xiumin whimper, watches him lean forward for more. Lu Han licks at the bloody mess of Xiumin’s mouth, and Xiumin goes limp.

“I… please, more,” he mumbles into Lu Han’s mouth, and Lu Han smiles into the kiss until it’s his teeth grinding against Xiumin’s lips.

“Soon,” he promises, biting playfully at Xiumin’s lip and dragging the bloody expanse into his own mouth, that wet mixture of his own blood and the bit that continues leaking from Xiumin’s split lips, the mixture making him shudder.

Xiumin moans in pain and exhaustion. There’s enough hatred in it that Lu Han is sure it’s not just for him anymore. Lu Han giggles, kissing Xiumin again. “Soon, pretty, but we have company.”

He breaks away from Xiumin, turning on his heel, and cocks his head towards the woods. There’s a faint rustling sound, coming closer, and Lu Han pulls out a throwing knife rather than one for cutting, waiting patiently as he blinks at the woods.

“Don’t,” Xiumin breaths from behind him, words thick, but no longer quite as raspy. “Lu Han, don’t.”

Lu Han snaps his head around, smile growing on his lips. “That’s the first time you’ve said my name, gorgeous.”

Xiumin goes pale, tipping his head back, resting it against the tree. He shuts his mouth tight, making his lips go pale beneath the smear of red. Lu Han shivers gleefully. “There you go. Maybe if you keep begging that pretty, I’ll be gentler with the next one. Maybe.”

Or maybe not. Lu Han doesn’t particularly care. But hearing Xiumin’s voice wind around his name is good enough that he wants to hear it again, and if he has an easy way to get that…

But Xiumin’s not speaking anymore, and Lu Han sighs and looks forward, into the trees, into the darkness, waiting.

He hears the first screams after a moment, a far-away scream of rage and hatred, high pitched, and then more, a few lower pitched, but Lu Han isn’t listening for that. He’s listening to the rustle in the underbrush, the sound of someone coming closer, closer.

The boy scramble out of the trees, full tilt, eyes fearful and wild. He’s got big eyes, huge even, staring wildly around, catching on the bloodied forms on the ground, the limp bodies of Chen and Baekhyun. He breathing stutters, panting unevenly. He’s small, delicate, and the first words out of his mouth is a timid, “Please don’t kill me!”

Lu Han shrugs. “It’s not up to me. Xiumin?”

Xiumin’s head snaps forward, and he stares, blinking a few times, head tilting. After a moment he drops his head again with a low moan. He doesn’t say anything else though, no plea of Lu Han’s name, no real reaction.

Lu Han beams. “I guess he doesn’t care about you,” he says, shaking his head as he steps forward, lowering his voice to a purr. “That’s probably better for you. I’ll make sure it’s fast.”

The boy screams, horrified, scrambling backwards, almost tripping, but he seems a bit more graceful on his feet than Xiumin’s precious Baekhyun. Not by much, but enough that it keeps him standing as Lu Han curls his fingers around his knife, preparing himself to attack. Before he can, he hears the fearful voice in the distance, the wail of, “Kyungsoo?”

Xiumin sucks in a breath so fast that he starts coughing weakly. Much better. That’s more of the reaction Lu Han was looking for.

“Ooh, no time to play,” Lu Han says, tutting, and changes his grip, tossing the blade. The other boy dodges awkwardly, sending the knife digging hard into his shoulder instead of his chest, and Lu Han watches as he tumbles to the ground, clutching at his arm. Lu Han steps over him lazily, calling back, “Channie?”

The arrow makes a grotesque sound, more  _ thud _ than  _ squish _ . Lu Han looks back to see the arrow all the way through the boy’s skull, pinning it to the ground and making Lu Han’s upper lip curl. There’s really no finesse in it, but it works, and besides, he was right. There’s no time at all to play because it’s only a few moments until someone else comes crashing into the clearing.

“Kyungsoo!” the newest boy yells again, that same voice, and then it catches in fear at the sight of the carnage, of Lu Han, of Chanyeol notching another arrow, and of, “X-xiumin?”

Xiumin lets out a pitiful moan, dropping his head, shoulders shaking. “Don’t. Lu Han, please.”

Lu Han moans aloud, crass and gleeful. “Oh, I told you I’d teach you how to say ‘please.’ It’s sweet. Does this one mean that much to you? Or are you just tired of watching them die for you?”

“Xiumin, oh god, Xiumin,” the boy says, but his eyes aren’t wild like the others. It’s a nice change. They’re calculating, shrewd, darting from Xiumin to Lu Han, to the bodies on the ground. He’s pale, shaking. He’s afraid. But he’s still making plans. He’s a Three, Lu Han can tell. Too smart for his own good.

“Suho. Suho, run. Run to Kris. Just go,” Xiumin moans, entire body curling down on itself. It’s too late. Xiumin knows it’s too late. But still he’s pleading. It was a good idea to give him that drink. It makes him so much more talkative.

“Xiumin, what’s he done to you?” the boy, Suho, asks, voice trembling, and Xiumin lets out a small sound of pain, but doesn’t respond.

Lu Han smiles. “Don’t worry. I hurt him better than anyone else, isn’t that right, Xiumin?”

Xiumin doesn’t answer for a few moments, and then, in a cracked, pleading voice, manages, “Then hurt me. Hurt me, Lu Han. Not him. Leave him alone.”

“Do you love this one too?” Lu Han asks, tilting his head. “Is he your friend, Xiumin?”

There’s a long, terrifying second and then, finally, shakily, “Yes… please, just stop. You can do whatever you want to me.”

Suho lets out a pained, startled noise, but Lu Han only giggles sweetly. “You really shouldn’t tell me these things you know, cutie. You should know better by now.”

He has knives in both hands within moments, the blades sharp along his skin, the feeling as familiar as breathing. They’re pretty, glinting in the dimming light, and against the bloody expanse of his palm, the one Xiumin was just drinking from, they look gleaming and silver. They’re the same ones he’s been using to hurt Xiumin for weeks now. One of these is the one that Xiumin came at him with, and Lu Han isn’t sure which, but it hardly matters. Every single one of Lu Han’s blades has hurt Xiumin now.

“I… I don’t want to fight you,” says the boy in front of him, voice shaking, and Xiumin sucks in a shivering breath. “But I will.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” Lu Han says, tipping his head to one side. He watches, aiming, fingers flexing and nicking themselves against the edges of the blades. “Don’t worry. I’m not out to hurt you. I just want to kill you.”

“That’s… that’s not gonna happen,” Suho says, taking half a step back, fumbling at his waist for a weapon he really should already have had out, and then his head snaps up at the sound of a low shout from not too far away and he gasps out an involuntary, “ _ Kris… _ ”

“Pay attention to what you’re doing,” Lu Han says, pouting a little. The knife slides from his hand, through the air, the tip of the metal sinking sharp and deep into Suho’s leg, and he lets out a cry, twisting, eyes flying back to Lu Han as he stumbles back, grabbing frantically at his leg.

From somewhere, not far away, there’s a voice, a panicked shout of, “Suh-“

The last vowel is cut off, the silence sharp and deep, and then Lu Han hears a shriek of female laughter, not quite close enough to cover up Suho’s sudden, broken noise of pain and horror, the quiet moan of pain that Xiumin gives from behind him, a soft little whisper of, “No, no, no.”

“That’s sweet,” Lu Han smiles, and brings his other knife up, tucking it into his palm. He’s listening to the trees now, waiting for the owner of that laughter. That person is a killer, someone he should probably keep an eye out for, but Suho is just more interesting with the way Xiumin had reacted to him. Lu Han paces forward, slowly, circling. “Now that there’s nothing to distract you, we can get down to the actual fight.”

Suho’s eyes follow him, a familiar look in them. There’s something there. Panic, mostly. Fear. But it’s not for Lu Han. It’s distant, lost, and Lu Han remembers Xiumin staring up at him and demanding a death that Lu Han had refused him.

Within seconds, hurt leg or not, Suho launches himself forward, pain a shout on his lips. Lu Han sidesteps, quick and fast, ducking under the graceless leap, moving back, away from him, back towards Xiumin. He waits, just for a moment, raising his eyebrow. “That’s cute. Do you want to try again?”

The sound Suho lets out is closer to a sob than anything, half choked off. It might have tried to be a scream, but it’s tightened up, thick. Lu Han watches, impassive. “Is that a no?”

“K-Kris…” Suho breaths, sad, afraid, and then darts his eyes up to Xiumin, swallowing a thick noise. “Xiumin…”

“I’m sorry,” Xiumin breathes from behind him. “Suho, I’m so sorry.”

Lu Han looks at him, curious, just a brief glance from the corner of his eyes. Xiumin’s head is down, and his eyes are closed. He’s not watching anymore.

Lu Han shakes his head. That won’t do at all.

He throws the second knife, hard, fast, watches it sink into Suho’s stomach with a sickening noise. Xiumin flinches, but doesn’t look, not watching as Suho grabs for his stomach, collapsing to his knees with a struggling gasp. Lu Han paces forward, slowly.

“I told Xiumin he could watch you die,” he says, almost conversationally, reaching out to wrap his fingers around the hilt and peel it free, wiggling it slowly. The skin splits wider with a sound like ripping cloth. “But there’s no point if you can’t even hold his attention.”

Suho shudders. “You… you don’t want to do this…” he moans, quietly.

Lu Han wiggles the knife a little more, pushing a choked noise of pain up out of Suho’s throat. It’s rough, wet, and behind him, Xiumin whines.

“Who says?” Lu Han coos. “Maybe I want to do this a lot. Maybe I want to hear you scream.”

Suho spasms a little, eyes far away. “N-no.”

“You’re right,” Lu Han says, pulling the knife all the way from his skin, laying the edge of it to his jaw instead. “I don’t really care one way or another. But Xiumin does. And he’s going to listen to you die screaming.”

He presses down, the knife splitting Suho’s skin, and Suho whimpers in the back of his throat, lowly. Lu Han smiles. “And that guy you’re screaming for… if he’s still alive, he’s going to hear you dying. And if he comes for you, you can watch him die too. If he’s not already dead. There’s more than just us around here, you know.”

Suho opens his mouth to scream and doesn’t stop. Lu Han makes sure he doesn’t. It’s all too easy to do what he’s good at, and he takes long moments to push his blades underneath each of Suho’s fingernails, prying them up, one by one. He shakes, screaming, and Lu Han hums to himself, a soft song under his breath as he digs through the quick of the missing nails, scraping up all the flesh until he can see the white of bone. He smiles at the thought.

“I could skin you,” he muses, digging his knife in near the bone and cutting, slowly, surely, all the way down, flaying off a strip of skin the length of his hand. Suho chokes on his own scream with a noise like bile rising in his throat. Lu Han pats the wound with one hand, humming for a moment in thought. “I could cut your skin into strips and use it to tie Xiumin down while I fuck him. I think he’d like that, don’t you?”

Suho gags violently, eyes going to Xiumin on instinct, and Xiumin stiffens. His head’s still down, but his eyes are open now, staring blankly into his own lap. It’s pretty, in a way, though not quite the one Lu Han would like. He’s trembling and pale, and Lu Han wonders what would happen if he handed Xiumin a knife right now.

He pulls Suho up, dropping him lazily in front of Xiumin, smiling at him as he nestles his dying friend in his lap. “Go on,” he purrs, leaning in to nuzzle the side of Xiumin’s jaw. “Beg for me not to kill him. You know you want to.”

“You’ll do it anyways,” Xiumin says, voice quiet, barely a murmur. “Even if I beg, you’ll kill him anyways.”

“You’re learning,” Lu Han hums back. “But this doesn’t work like it did for you. You wanted to die and here you are. He wants to die, and well… I don’t like him enough to keep him.”

“Xiumin, it’s okay,” Suho says softly, voice shaking. Lu Han frowns at him. This isn’t his place, but Xiumin flinches so violently at the sound of his voice that Lu Han lets him speak. “Xiumin, just let him kill me. It’s okay.”

“S-Suho…” Xiumin whispers, so soft that even Lu Han, right near his mouth, can hardly hear it.

Lu Han smiles. “What are you going to do, cutie?”

“I… Lu Han, please,” Xiumin begs, voice shattered, raw with emotion. Lu Han’s teeth press against Xiumin’s skin as he grins, waiting for the plea, for Xiumin to ask him to spare this one. Just this one. Lu Han even considers giving it to him for a moment. But Xiumin’s voice is quiet. “Let me do it. Please. Let me be the one to kill him.”

Lu Han pulls back, startled, head cocking to one side. Xiumin looks raw, like there’s nothing left of him. If Lu Han hurt him now, he would break into nothing, into pieces. Lu Han smiles.

“Pretty,” he coos, and fishes out a knife, reaching around behind Xiumin to cut the ropes holding his hands together. He drags them forward, around to the front, using his own hands to grip Xiumin’s as he folds them around the hilt of the blade, laying it over Suho’s throat.

Suho stares a moment longer, shaking, and then closes his eyes.

Lu Han helps Xiumin press down, waiting until the knife draws blood, and then letting go. “Go on,” he encourages, smiling. “Pull straight across. Just like your friend Lay.”

Xiumin shivers, swallowing hard, and pulls straight across, watching blood ooze out of Suho’s neck.

It’s quiet for a long moment and then Lu Han lets out a soft moan, leaning in to kiss Xiumin roughly. Xiumin lets him, and Lu Han feels him trying to twist the knife between them. It’s a weak attempt, but it’s an attempt nonetheless. Lu Han beams, leaning away and plucking the knife from his hands. “Later, pretty.”

Xiumin sighs, barely more than a breath, and curls into himself, exhaustion seeping from his pores. Lu Han smiles and stands, leaving Xiumin sitting on the ground, and turns on his heel, smiling at the girl who’s stepped into the clearing. “Sorry, were you wanting to play? I think he’s all done for now, but you and I could have some fun.”

“You took my kill,” she spits, all venom, and Lu Han glances her over. She’s covered in blood, all the way up to her elbows, a splatter across her shirt. She’s a little hurt, but not enough that he thinks she’s anywhere close to the victim here. A One. Not even one of the fun ones either.

“Actually, he took your kill,” he says, nodding at Xiumin, “but if you want to cast some blame, I’d be happy to go ahead and kill you instead.”

She bristles, jaw clenching. “That little bitch whose throat you just slit is the whole reason my team is dead.”

Lu Han sighs. “You’re boring. A revenge plot, really? You’re keeping me from Xiumin for that?”

She looks at him, eyes blazing, teeth baring into a snarl. “Don’t you fucking d—“

She stops, a low gurgle rising up, the gleam of a point sticking through her chest. For a moment, Lu Han thinks to glare at Chanyeol, but it’s entirely the wrong angle, and as the girl falls, the point pulls free, leaving the bloody point of a spear hovering behind her in Sehun’s hand. Lu Han blinks, mouth pulling.

“What are  _ you _ doing here?” he spits, eyes angry. Sehun had made it clear where he stood the moment he had tried to hurt Chanyeol all those weeks ago. Lu Han doesn’t forgive easily. “Do you want me to kill you too?”

“I just took out half of that camp,” Sehun says slowly, eyes almost painfully dilated in the fading light. “I’m not your enemy, Lu Han. We’re both from Two. I want out of here, just like you do.”

Lu Han bristles, but Chanyeol steps forward, curling his fingers around Lu Han’s arm. “The twins are dead, Lu Han. There might as well be three of us.”

“Four,” Lu Han says, jerking his head around to stare at Chanyeol in bewildered annoyance. “You think I’m letting Xiumin go?”

Chanyeol looks at Lu Han for a very long time, expression not changing. “There might as well be four of us,” he corrects himself quietly, long seconds later.

Lu Han sighs and then shrugs, letting himself relax. In the distance, a kind of final background noise to their truce, the cannons begin to fire. Lu Han hasn’t been keeping count, but after they’re done, Chanyeol’s voice cuts through the silence sharper than any one of Lu Han’s knives. “Fifty six. It’s time for us to go.”

Lu Han smiles and goes to collect Xiumin.

—

Xiumin is testing his luck as they walk, Lu Han notes. He’s weaving, like he’s drunk, head down and eyes blinking closed for long seconds that make him stumble occasionally. But they’re purposeful, little jerks and spasms that take him further from Lu Han, like he’s trying to move, to get away. It’s cute, in a way.

“Shouldn’t you have his hands tied?” Sehun asks, voice tight. He keeps casting little uncomfortable looks at Xiumin, but even Xiumin knows well enough to all but ignore him.

Lu Han lolls his head over to give him a look. “Pushing your luck already?” he asks nastily, looking over Sehun without expression. “I don’t want you here.”

Sehun cringes a little, falling silent again. At least he knows his place. Lu Han allows himself to smile at that. “Xiumin’s fine, isn’t he?”

He reaches out, winds his fingers through Xiumin’s and tugs. The other boy flinches so hard that Lu Han might as well have bitten him, but it brings him back in closer anyways, allowing Lu Han to wind himself silkily around Xiumin, arms coiling around his waist. Xiumin struggles, genuinely tripping this time, hands pushing at Lu Han’s arms in an attempt to peel him away.

Lu Han only smiles and noses at the back of his neck, licking at the skin with a hum of pleasure.

“Get off me,” Xiumin says, voice cold. There’s an edge there now. All that pain and Xiumin’s finally cracked to pieces, and the edges of those are sharp. Lu Han can’t wait to cut his fingers on them.

But he has to wait, because Chanyeol interrupts him with a quiet, “There’s our way out.”

He jerks his chin at the stones rising above the trees in front of them. Lu Han hasn’t been here since the day they found it, but Chanyeol’s been coming and going for weeks, trying to figure it out, trying to determine what makes this place so special. He walks up to the stone, grazing his hand over it until he reaches the opening, not reaching out to touch.

“What’s wrong with it?” Sehun asks, ever the practical one.

“Does it matter?” Lu Han snaps, distracting himself from the annoyance of Sehun by biting at Xiumin’s neck, hard enough to make him jerk. Lu Han kisses the spot. It’s not an apology, of course, but it looks pretty, and he wants to kiss it, the action muffling his continued comment to Sehun. “It’s the way out. Unless you’d like to stay here?”

Sehun glares at him, and Lu Han can hear him suck in air like he’s preparing himself to go off, but Chanyeol makes a small warning noise, interrupting him.

“It won’t let you in without some sort of blood sacrifice, apparently,” he says quietly, and then, before Lu Han can speak up adds, “A little from you, right before you go through.”

As if to show it off, he nicks his finger with an arrow, expression never changing, and presses his hand forward into the entrance. It glows red, violently, but it lets him through.

It shimmers behind him, fading back to transparency and then Chanyeol is on the other side, waiting patiently for Lu Han, as always.

“Oh,” Lu Han says with a shrug tugging his shoulders up. The action annoys Xiumin who elbows him hard in the solar plexus and makes Lu Han laugh out an  _ oof _ of noise, though he doesn’t let go. He just tightens his arms, his laughter a little winded. “I can do that too. Would you like to do the honors, pretty?”

“What, you’re asking me?” Xiumin asks, eyes gleaming with it, and then he deflates a little and growls, “Do it your fucking self. You’d just like it.”

“You know me so well,” Lu Han sighs, smiling prettily, and then steps away from Xiumin pushing him forward. “But let’s get you done first.”

Xiumin looks down at himself and laughs, a broken, exhausted sound. Lu Han knows why. He’s still covered in blood, so much of it. It’s not all his own at this point, but Xiumin probably feels the sting of pain in enough places to be able to identify what’s his and what’s not.

Lu Han smiles. They both know he’ll make a new cut for this anyways. Why pass up a perfectly good chance?

He takes Xiumin’s hand in his, and this time Xiumin only cringes, hand not pulling free even as Lu Han cuts slowly, deeply, along the line of his palm. He doesn’t know which line. Maybe love. Maybe life. Either way, Lu Han is slicing it open, flaying it raw, and Xiumin is letting him. It’s stunning, especially when Xiumin rips his hand away, leaving a jagged gash at the end that he smears messily across the barrier.

Lu Han smiles as Xiumin stands there for a moment, the second stretching out into an eternity. Xiumin knows his choices now. He also knows how they’ll end for him. Lu Han wants to see what he’ll choose.

After a moment, Xiumin pushes through the barrier in front of them. It looks like it all but saps his strength, and he folds over onto himself once he’s past it, taking deep breaths like he’s trying not to hyperventilate. Lu Han can hear the faintest of whispers on his breath, and they sound like apologies. That or muted screams.

Lu Han cocks his head, watching from the other side. He spends long enough standing still that Sehun pushes past him warily, his own hand bleeding enough to allow him through the doorway. Lu Han blinks a moment and then follows without looking back.

—

“You’re fucking insane,” Sehun snaps, eyes wide as he stares at the hallways spiraling down into stone corridors. It’s a second layer of access, one clearly set up to separate them, each hallway with a barrier that lets only one of them through this time. Chanyeol’s already opened his hallway, though he hasn’t stepped foot into it, still standing by Lu Han’s side, face impassive. Sehun is the only one who isn’t pleased, still kicking up a fuss.

Lu Han sneers at him. “I get that you’re not creative enough to come up with new insults, but that one’s never gotten you where you wanted to be.”

“You think it’s a good idea to let him let his fucking— _ whatever _ in there with us?” Sehun defends himself, looking to Chanyeol. “It’s one thing with all of us keeping an eye on him, but by himself? It’s not even suicide, it’s just stupidity!”

Lu Han scoffs before Chanyeol can answer. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t even have anything to worry about. If Xiumin’s going to try and kill one of us, it’ll be me, won’t it, cutie?”

Xiumin barely glances up. “I’ll kill any one of you fucks that you let me get my hands on,” he says, voice quiet, still breathy. He’s just barely starting to get over his panic attack, and his hands are shaking with it. “Don’t think I won’t.”

Lu Han smiles fondly. Sehun takes this as a chance to gesture wildly, voice rising in pitch. “See? I don’t want him in there with me.”

“Fine,” Lu Han answers. “Stay here then.”

“Lu Han,” Chanyeol interrupts, hand touching Lu Han’s shoulder softly. Lu Han turns to glare at him, but Chanyeol only squeezes his shoulder more firmly and shakes his head. “They can both come. It’s not like Xiumin’s even got a way to attack us. Are you worried you can’t handle him, Sehun?”

“Why are you  _ defending _ this?” Sehun asks, sounding appalled. He takes a step towards them and then seems to think better of it. He probably remembers the last time. “He’s just a fucking Eleven that Lu Han got obsessed with! Why are we catering to Lu Han’s craziness?”

“Leave it be, Sehun,“ Chanyeol says, voice tightening. "This isn’t about you.”

“Fuck this,” Sehun snaps. “If we don’t kill him, he’s going to kill us. I’m not waiting around for him to attack us because Lu Han can’t get his shit together and just kill him.”

“ _ Leave it be _ ,” Chanyeol repeats, insistent now, hand tight on Lu Han’s arm. It aches a little, down to the bone, but Chanyeol’s not letting go and Lu Han’s not struggling. He’s watching Sehun with narrowed eyes, waiting, hoping.

“No! I want to fucking live, Chanyeol. Not get through all of this and get turned on by Lu Han’s new pet!”

Lu Han scoffs, narrowing his eyes at him. “He’s not a pet, Sehun,” he snaps out, and then his voice softens into a sigh, soft and sweet, the kind of voice that might have matched his face, matched his favorite giggles. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

The way Sehun’s face twists is funny, but it’s the sound Xiumin makes that sends shivers of pleasure up Lu Han’s spine. He’s already struggling to stay calm, and he sucks in air so fast that it makes him choke, gagging on a sound that is as high-pitched and whining as any scream could ever be.

Chanyeol’s fingers tighten to vices, digging bruises into Lu Han’s shoulder, so tightly that Lu Han can feel the slight edge of Chanyeol’s fingernails digging in through his shirt. He squirms a little, smile widening, eyes flickering from Xiumin to Chanyeol. His face is tense, frozen, the lack of reaction making Lu Han smile sweetly and lean into Chanyeol’s touch, a purr on his lips. “You have, haven’t you, Channie?”

“Lu Han,” Chanyeol snaps, voice wavering slightly. “Lu Han, stop. You’re done. We have to go now. It’s over.”

“That’s right. It’s over. I’m done with this,” Sehun says, pulling attention back to him. He takes a step forward, his fingers curling around his spear, cocking his arm, mouth flattening to a firm press. “I’m not going to die because you’re fucked up, Lu Han. I’ll take care of this myself.”

Xiumin jerks his head up, eyes gleaming a little, watching Sehun with intent, waiting. Waiting for Sehun to kill him. Sehun, not Lu Han.

Lu Han feels Chanyeol’s fingernails tear up his shoulder as he jerks free, but it doesn’t matter. He flings himself onto Sehun with an incoherent shriek of rage, slamming into him hard enough to make him stumble. They crash into the wall together, Sehun’s skull cracking against the stone with a sound that makes Lu Han twitch, his hands going to Sehun’s face.

His fingers are claws, shredding their way down Sehun’s skin, ripping into his eye sockets with a wet noise like cutting into a grape. The sound disappears under Sehun’s scream of fear, the sound of his hands thudding blindly against Lu Han’s body as he tries to slap him away. Lu Han hisses like something venomous.

“He’s  _ mine _ ,” he spits, the words battering against the back of teeth as he growls them into Sehun’s face, his expression twisted into something horrific. It’s not pretty. Lu Han is not pretty. Lu Han is a weapon, fierce and sharp, and in this moment the furthest thing from beautiful. “I’m the only one who gets to touch him,” he snarls, “I’m the only one who gets to kill him. Ever. He’s  _ mine _ !”

“Lu Han!” Chanyeol shouts over him. “Lu Han, he’s on our team!”

Before that would have mattered. Lu Han is a weapon, not a monster, and he wouldn’t kill one of his own, but right now sound is screaming in his ears, louder than Chanyeol by far, and Lu Han forces his fingers down into Sehun’s skull, fingers digging into his eye sockets until they meet resistance and then pressing further, harder, finding the tiny hollow at the back of the socket and curling his fingers as hard as he can until he’s cradling Sehun’s cheek bones in the curvature of his hands and Sehun is shaking under him, liquid streaming from his eyes in a disgusting mixture of blood and tears and vitreous fluid, seeping down the sides of his face.

“You should have just let Xiumin kill you,” Lu Han spits, lips curling into a sneer. “It would have been kinder.”

Then he wrenches his arms as hard as he can, listening to the satisfying snap of Sehun’s neck. He stays there for a moment, breathing heavily, and then pulls his hand back to wipe them on Sehun’s shirt, leaving damp smears along the body. He grimaces. “Disgusting.”

When he turns around, Chanyeol is staring at him like he’s never seen him before. Xiumin is looking at the ground again, and his breathing is even now, slow, almost like he’s calm. Lu Han crawls his way off of Sehun, over to Xiumin, petting his face with sticky hands and cooing. “Mine,” he repeats, softly. “You’re mine.”

Xiumin doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t have to. Not when he doesn’t fight back against Lu Han pulling him up and guiding him past Sehun’s corpse to one of the hallways. Not when he only closes his eyes and shudders in response to the kiss Lu Han presses to his cheek.

Lu Han pushes Xiumin through the second barrier with a smile and a promise of, “See you soon.”

Xiumin turns and walks into the dark hallway, and Lu Han smiles and turns back to Chanyeol. “Ready, Channie?”

“Lu Han, you killed him,” Chanyeol says, eyes hard enough to make Lu Han uncomfortable, make his face twist up again. “One of our own. A Two.”

“He was going to kill Xiumin,” Lu Han spits. “He’s not allowed. Xiumin’s mine.”

“You’re not supposed to hurt our own,” Chanyeol argues.

“Why not?” Lu Han asks, teeth baring into a smile that is hardly more than a snarl. “I’m a weapon. I hurt people. I hurt you. What’s the difference?”

Chanyeol doesn’t answer him, and Lu Han doesn’t care to wait. He steps into one of the hallways and follows it down until he can no longer see Chanyeol or the remnants of Sehun.

—

It’s a maze. They’ve walked right into a maze, and Lu Han would be amused if he weren’t so annoyed by it.

The walls are unnaturally high above his head, disappearing up into greyish light somewhere yards above him, the same way the hallways disappear into a featureless void a few yards in front of his face. He remembers the floor sloping downwards into a slow circle, guiding him down into the earth, but he doesn’t remember going so far, so it’s a little off putting that the walls are so high, towering over him like monoliths of slick stone, smooth and endless.

Lu Han hasn’t seen any clues either, not hint towards the way out. It’s for the best; it wouldn’t do for Xiumin to get out first. Not that he’s particularly worried. Lu Han knows Xiumin well enough by now to be sure that even if he had the chance, escaping wouldn’t rise nearly as high on his list of priorities as attempting to get his precious revenge. He’ll always come after Lu Han, no matter how poorly his attempt went the last time. His persistence is as admirable as it is adorable.

But Lu Han has seen no sign of Xiumin. No signs of anyone in fact. Well, no, that’s not entirely true; they’ve sent ghosts after him — the twins, their eyes hateful and cold with Jongin’s set in a mangled backdrop; Sehun, eyeless and moaning under his breath about Lu Han’s mental state like he’s not babbling like a crazy person himself.

All of them had dissolved when Lu Han touched them, crumbling to dust at his feet. If the gamemakers expect Lu Han to cringe at that, they’re sorely mistaken. He doesn’t look back, just walks through the maze, cutting his fingers every so often to make symbols on the walls, sucking lazily on them in the interim.

Once he’s looped back on himself three or four times though, he begins to whine to himself, impatient and frustrated. He’s not used to this. He’s used to having Xiumin to pay attention to, used to having Chanyeol to take note of his frustration and help him channel it. But now he’s alone in the silence but for his own breathing, and Lu Han can hear it with such clarity that it feels like each breath has too much weight. After a while, it becomes a struggle to draw in air, and he has to suck it in harder, faster, panic rising in his throat like bile.

He wants the ghosts back. They had been something at least, something better than this pervading sense of _ nothing _ that clings to the stone walls, making his heartbeat seem painfully loud. He drops into a crouch, cradling his head in his hands, shaking it back and forth with a low shiver, his throat seizing up and breath bursting out of him.

The scream echoes off the walls, all that smooth grey stone bouncing the sound around him in a way that makes Lu Han tremble, goosebumps rising on his skin. It’s loud, grotesque, and Lu Han feels it in his bones, a smile cutting its way across his face. It isn’t until the whimper crawls up his throat that he even vaguely considers the possibility that it might not be himself screaming.

He presses his lips together, tight enough to make his scar ache a little, but the scream goes on and on around him, and Lu Han lets out a little bit of a sob. He’s not alone. There’s someone there, someone real, something besides his own breathing and the stone walls.

He manages to get his feet under him, walking forward in relief, aching to get away from the silent stillness behind him. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but it doesn’t particularly matter. He’s still pushing forward, into the maze, keeping an eye out for streaks of red, hints that he’s been here before, but mostly he’s just following the sound.

The screaming fades after a few moments, but there are other sounds that Lu Han can pick up on more clearly as he moves closer, little whimpers and sounds of terror, the ever-familiar pleas of, “No… no, don’t… please don’t.”

It doesn’t take long to get to him. The sounds echo off the walls just like the screaming, giving Lu Han a clear path to follow, and there are only three, maybe four possible turns.

It’s almost funny. How could Lu Han ever have imagined himself alone when Xiumin was this close?

The corridor gives way to an abrupt corner, forcing Lu Han to turn left, and there he is. He’s stunning, even moreso now, and Lu Han realizes that he can see very nearly every one of his bones in a way that makes Lu Han want to cut his skin open and touch them, curious to see what weapons like them are made of, if his bones will be as iron as his blood.

But Xiumin isn’t looking at him. He’s looking straight ahead, eyes fixated on something in the hallway beyond, and Lu Han pauses to look at him, head tilting and mouth quirking. Already he can feel himself calming, no longer alone in the unchanging labyrinth of walls, but Xiumin is anything but calm, his entire body shaking. Lu Han would almost think him a ghost except for the fact that he’s not paying attention to Lu Han, and there’s no point in sending him a copy of Xiumin that doesn’t react.

Well, doesn’t react to him. Xiumin is clearly reacting to something, and Lu Han steps forward to see, watching as the distant nothingness resolves itself into familiar figures. They have a slightly warped texture, the way Lu Han’s ghosts had, but more than that, Lu Han can see the wounds on them, wounds that had killed them. Lu Han knows because he had caused them.

Lay is dripping blood from his neck onto the floor, bubbles of it popping at his throat. Next to him, Tao is clutching at his side, blood oozing between his fingers. Both of them are looking at Xiumin who’s shaking, babbling to himself half frantically, the sight of the boys he had failed making him sob openly.

“Please, please,” he whispers, shaking his head, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please.”

“This is your fault,” Tao says, face twisted into something like pain. “It’s your fault that we’re dead. You’re the one who told me you’d help me get free, and now I’m dead and you’re not. It’s not  _ fair _ , ge.”

“No, don’t,” Xiumin whimpers, clutching at his own skin like he might fall apart. “Don’t say that. I didn’t mean… Tao, L-Lay, I…”

“He killed me, ge,” Lay whispers, and his voice is weak, a gurgle to his words that makes Lu Han perk up, remembering the way Xiumin had fretted over him as he died the first time. Back then, Lu Han had taken pleasure in listening to the way Xiumin tried to reassure his friend even as he lay dying, but now he gets to listen as the boy breaths, “I didn’t want to die, ge. It hurt so badly.”

Xiumin lets out a quiet moan, taking a stumbling step back. “No,” he whimpers. “No, no, please.”

“I was supposed to win,” Tao says, taking a step forward and letting out a startlingly realistic moan of pain. “I was supposed to get out of here and go home. I just wanted to make them proud.”

“I-I…” Xiumin stutters out, body shaking so hard that his teeth are chattering.

“Ge,” Lay whispers, stumbling forward. “I… I just wanna see Mama again.”

He steps forward, reaching for Xiumin, and then trips and collapses in a heap, clearly crying. Xiumin steps forward, even before he starts to trip, trying to catch him. Lu Han wonders how many times Xiumin has relived this. It’s almost better than anything Lu Han could do to him. Almost.

“Yixing, I’m so s-sorry,” Xiumin manages, trying to curl himself around the boy on the ground, but the moment Xiumin touches him, he collapses to dust, just as the other ghosts did. Xiumin lets out a cry, scrambling like he’s trying to hold the dust together. “No. No, Lay, no.”

“He’s dead, ge,” Tao says, voice low. “He’s dead. I’m dead. You killed us.”

“Mmm, that’s not true,” Lu Han notes finally, stepping forward, and Xiumin lets out a low moan, curling into himself a little. “I killed them. But you helped, didn’t you, Xiumin? You didn’t save them.”

“You’re not real,” Xiumin mumbles to himself, shaking. “Go away. You’re not real.”

“Oh, I’m very real,” Lu Han says, a smile on his lips as he moves past Xiumin, reaching out.

Tao moves away from him, fear flickering on his face, and he gasps, “’Umin, ge…” before Lu Han’s hand catches him and he crumbles to ash at Lu Han’s feet.

Lu Han grins. “See?”

Xiumin lets out a noise of agonized pain, like Lu Han’s murdered them all over again instead of just taking care of a ghost, and then he’s flying at Lu Han, the two of them crashing into the wall. Lu Han’s head cracks against the stone, Xiumin’s hands shoving at him, and Lu Han reels a bit, dizzy.

He laughs, breathlessly, eyes gleaming. God, yes. Yes. This is all he’s wanted for so long, and now Xiumin is hurting him, and Lu Han wants to moan. Instead, he looks at Xiumin dead in the face and softens his voice, looking at Xiumin with wide eyes. “Are you going to kill me, ge?”

Xiumin sucks in air, reeling back at the name, and Lu Han takes advantage, shoving him back, hard, until Xiumin is falling and Lu Han can clamber on top of him and grin. “Now, now,” he tuts playfully, shaking his head, “you’re getting soft on me. Can’t afford that, can we? Not when we’re so very close to getting out.”

“F-fuck you,” Xiumin gasps, clearly winded. It makes him sound even more pathetic, but Lu Han’s just pleased that he’s fighting back, struggling against Lu Han’s hold. Lu Han lets him, just for a moment, amazing himself by tracing the evident shape of Xiumin’s bones, fingers smoothing over the jut of his collarbones in fascination.

After a moment though, he stands, pulling Xiumin up and nuzzling at him. “Don’t worry, cutie,” he says, just to draw a shudder from him, to get Xiumin to struggle in his arms, thrashing uselessly against his hold. Lu Han smiles. “We’ll be out soon.”

He pushes Xiumin forward, past the piles of dust that are all that remain of even the ghosts of his loves.

—

Lu Han doesn’t know how many days it takes them to find the exit, but Chanyeol is waiting for them at the end, leaning against the wall before the exit. He lifts an eyebrow at Lu Han who merely smiles sweetly, one hand curling around Xiumin’s waist, pulled thin and almost gaunt.

Xiumin’s too pretty with his bones sticking out like this for Lu Han to ignore, and besides, Xiumin has been more pliant as he gets hungrier, easier to guide to his whims, even if he looks at Lu Han sometimes like he might leap at him, might try to devour Lu Han, no matter what the consequences.

Apparently, Xiumin hasn’t quite reached the stage of cannibalism yet, though, and Lu Han supposes that it’s safer that he be able to easily overpower Xiumin now. At least Chanyeol will be pleased with him for thinking ahead.

He bats his eyes playfully at the other Two as they approach, Chanyeol nodding at them both. Lu Han supposes he was probably waiting to see who came out first, to kill Xiumin if he came out without Lu Han, and the thought is simultaneously offensive and sweet. It doesn’t matter though; Chanyeol makes no threats against them when Lu Han is the one approaching him, and then they walk out of the maze together and stand in front of hundreds of people screaming their names.

Well, screaming his name, even Chanyeol’s. No one yells for Xiumin who stands there for long seconds and then suddenly, gracelessly, slumps onto the ground and begins bawling, shaking and apologizing under his breath, over and over.

“You’d almost think he wanted to die in there,” Lu Han says, a giggle on his lips, watching Xiumin. He knows full well what Xiumin wanted, what Xiumin intended. He’s just not willing to give it.

Chanyeol waves at the crowd for them, does all of the talking, all of the smiling, and Lu Han just watches Xiumin cry, watches him flinch away when the mentors come and try to help him.

“Don’t,” he breaths, trembling under their touch, pushing away from them to make space between them. He’s learned his lesson well, at least, of what happens to people when they try to help him. “I’m fine. Don’t touch me.”

“Good boy,” Lu Han says, his grin sharp enough that it hurts. He tilts his head, just slightly, looking him over. “You’re learning.”

Xiumin pulls into himself, trying to ball himself back up, trying to make himself small and inconsequential. It doesn’t work when the cameras throw his visage up on screens that blow up his features so large that each of the marks and features visible on his skin is larger than his actual body and each tear is clear and steady, no matter how Xiumin’s red-rimmed eyes try to squeeze shut to keep them in.

Lu Han walks over to him, curling a hand under his chin, lifting it up, and Xiumin tenses, jaw tight under Lu Han’s touch. He rips himself backward, swaying when the action throws himself off-balance, teetering weakly even as his eyes open to aim a watery glare at him.

Lu Han smiles. “You should let them fix you up,” he says sweetly, stroking a hand down Xiumin’s cheek and watching as he shakes, unable to pull away anymore without falling, and Xiumin looks so torn as to whether he’s willing to splay himself out like that when he knows what Lu Han can do. Not that Xiumin’s position really changes Lu Han’s capabilities, but Lu Han’s pretty sure that Xiumin finds false security like this, and he’s willing to let it happen for now; it’ll make it sweeter later when he proves to Xiumin exactly how wrong he is.

“No,” Xiumin refuses, shaking his head, knuckles white where his fists are curling around his legs, clutching them to himself. Not that it’s easy to tell; all of Xiumin is pale right now, skin nearly colorless from stress and hunger and blood loss.

“No?” Lu Han asks in response. “You don’t want anyone but me to touch you? That’s sweet.”

“I don’t want  _ you  _ to touch me,” Xiumin snarls back and then immediately cringes a little like he regrets it, reacting ahead of Lu Han’s giggle and the cup of his palm around Xiumin’s jaw. Lu Han lets his thumb skid over Xiumin’s cheek, his hand curling around his jaw and the side of his throat, cradling his head and curling the tips of his fingers hard into the back of his neck. It bows Xiumin’s head, forcing him to submit to Luhan’s lips on his skin, brushing over his cheek near his ear.

“Oh, I know that, cutie, but you’ll let me, won’t you?” he asks quietly, and when Xiumin just shudders and doesn’t answer, he grins. His teeth close around the top of Xiumin’s ear, sharp and hard, making Xiumin whine. He presses a kiss on the spot with a giggle. “Let them clean you up, cutie. I’m not done with you yet, and it won’t do for you to fall apart on me.”

“I don’t want to,” Xiumin spits, twisting his body. He’s finally decided that toppling over and making himself weaker is better than letting Lu Han hold him like this, like some sort of last ditch effort. Lu Han doesn’t even let him have it. He clings tighter, his other hand darting out to grip Xiumin’s upper arm and hold him in place, refusing Xiumin even this.

“Don’t you want to be strong enough to stop me?” Lu Han asks, blinking a few times, feigning curiosity. It’s less curiosity, more interest, honestly. Amusement, maybe. It’s adorable to watch Xiumin’s internal struggle. “Not that I don’t like you all sweet and pliant like this for me.”

Xiumin makes a noise like he’s drowning, muffled down deep like he doesn’t dare let out what little air he has in his lungs but still wants nothing more than to scream for help. It won’t come, even if he does scream. Not unless Lu Han allows it.

“Go get patched up,” he insists, letting go of Xiumin and watching him crumple to the ground. “I want to get to ruin you all over again.”

Xiumin lets them pull him up this time, guide him away. Mostly he looks like he doesn’t have the strength to struggle anymore. That’s no good. Lu Han’s glad that they’ll give him something of himself back, just so that Lu Han has  _ something _ there to shatter.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Chanyeol asks from behind him, clapping a hand over his shoulder. He’s a little gaunt too, now that Lu Han looks at him properly, but he’s holding himself together well. Chanyeol always does.

“I know what I’m doing,” Lu Han says, smiling at him sweetly. “Trust me.”

Chanyeol’s face does something strange and foreign, jaw tightening and eyes giving one quick, sharp blink before he relaxes again. “I’m sure you do,” he says, squeezing Lu Han’s arm, and then adds, “Are you going to let them check you over? Even weapons need repairs.”

Lu Han hums a little. “Might as well,” he says, and pulls himself from Chanyeol’s touch, all but skipping over to the medics waiting for them. They don’t even exchange glances before they take Lu Han in, which is a little foolish, but Lu Han has better people to destroy.

He’s too busy thinking about Xiumin to realize that Chanyeol hadn’t responded to his demand for trust.

—

There’s a way these things are done. They all go to the medical building, they’re all given fluids and nutritional supplements, and they’re all given medical care, wounds closing up under Capitol technology, leaving little more than the slim white lines of scars.

Lu Han pouts a little at all of it. His fingers are whole, the skin unbroken. His legs are decorated with stacks of white lines from Chanyeol’s knife, but they’re no longer sore to the touch. His hands and arms have only remnants of nicks and scratches, just faint memories of pain. It makes him squirm and bite hard at the scar beneath his lip, unable to find another scar to press on that even begins to hurt.

But he forces himself calm. He has plans, so he needs to stay sheathed until then. It’s just difficult when he has spent so long being able to cut and hurt at will, when he’s been allowed to cause pain freely and have pain of his own whenever he desires it. But he has to stay sheathed, just for a little while longer. Just until he leaves the medical building.

They let them leave quickly enough that Lu Han isn’t frantic, merely strained, when they’re lead from their hospital beds and tucked into a van together. Lu Han immediately winds himself around Xiumin who is still pale, a little haunted looking, but no longer stained with wounds and jagged with countable bones. His cheeks are full again, cute, and he’s decorated in lines of white. Lu Han remembers the shudder of necessity that had swept through him when he first saw Xiumin, made up and fierce on that stage. He feels it again, stronger, when Xiumin struggles under his grip and shoves at Lu Han with a renewed vigor.

The driver politely ignores the way Lu Han wrangles Xiumin, merely keeping his eyes straight ahead, and Chanyeol stares at them with the same wary patience as always, prepared to step in when Lu Han is done. No one’s coming to help Xiumin, and Lu Han wants to remind him of that, clinging viciously to Xiumin as he struggles fitfully, pressing new bruises into Xiumin’s skin to replace the ones the medics had so carefully erased.

“See, I knew you’d be so much sweeter when you had your strength back,” he coos into Xiumin’s ear, ignoring the stutter in Xiumin’s movement, the abrupt swallow around what sounds like the beginnings of a sob. “Don’t worry. We have all the time in the world together now.”

He nuzzles at Xiumin and giggles breathlessly when Xiumin jerks hard enough to snap the seatbelt hard across their chests, making a stripe of discomfort bloom under the pressure. He doesn’t let go until the truck pulls into the hotel that they’ll be staying at tonight, continuously touching Xiumin just to feel him shudder and watch him jerk and flinch away.

But the hotel is distracting, and Lu Han lets up for a minute when they’re ushered in the door and introduced to their newest handler, a Capitol man with wide eyes and an excited chatter on his lips that Lu Han instantly ignores in favor of blinking at their surroundings, gold-plated and too nice.

He bets they have white sheets. He bets they have soft pillows and bone-white bedding, and the thought of it makes him hiss through his teeth, excitement welling in him.

They’re crowded into a mirrored elevator, filled with slightly tinny music and the senseless stream of words that the Capitol man seems insistent on spilling. Lu Han is mildly annoyed, but he’s more preoccupied with the way that Xiumin keeps his head down the entire time, staring at the floor. Lu Han can see him in every reflection, a million times over, and he looks more shaken to be in here than even to be in the van with Lu Han draped over him and clinging.

At first Lu Han thinks it might be the height, but no;  there’s something else, something  _ more _ , and Lu Han isn’t sure what it is until he gets too close and Xiumin’s eyes flicker up to watch him warily and catch, momentarily, on his own reflection. The spasm of his expression is more telling than anything else.

Lu Han smiles to himself, rocking back onto his heels for a moment just to observe, and then leans in again, one finger curling under Xiumin’s chin pointedly. Xiumin snarls, head whipping up, and snaps at Lu Han’s finger like he might bite it off, but he gets distracted by his own face in the mirror and goes abruptly tense, shaking like a leaf.

“Pretty,” Lu Han notes with amusement, the Capitol man looking at them both in concern, his constant babble trailing off as he blinks at the two of them, tension suddenly lining his shoulders. Honestly, people should know better than to set handlers that can’t actually handle their charges, but if Lu Han decided to tear Xiumin’s throat out, here and now, the Capitol man wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Chanyeol might, but Chanyeol’s been his handler for a very long time now, knows fairly well when Lu Han will snap. Maybe. Lu Han knows that the games have changed something in him, made him more unpredictable. Lu Han also knows that Chanyeol isn’t entirely pleased with that.

Either way, Lu Han has no desire to tear out Xiumin’s throat, only watches it in amusement to track the harsh swallow that stifles Xiumin’s instinctive response to Lu Han’s purr of, “You’ve spent so long in there you’ve forgotten what you look like, hmm? You think you should have come out the other side as someone else.”

His hand snaps out, raking one finger down the curve of Xiumin’s jaw, the thin white line that Lu Han had carved there in a delicate, bloody stroke. He leaves a wider white line on top of it, fingernail scraping off a layer of skin, and Xiumin jerks away fast enough to make the scratch end in a jagged taper and sets his jaw so that Lu Han can all but trace the bone with his eyes, just beneath the surface. He lets his hand drop, smiling sweetly.

“It’s alright,” he says, in a voice that would be soothing if it wasn’t lined with the threat of teeth, “you’re still as beautiful as ever.”

Xiumin shudders weakly, closing his eyes, and drops his head back down to avoid the mirrors. Lu Han leans back against one and watches Xiumin tremble in a dozen reflections that capture his every movement.

—

Night sweeps over the hotel quickly, but it’s a very different kind of night than Lu Han is used to. The patches of sky beyond the windows are not dark. They glow with the reflection of hundreds of thousands of neon lights, bright and corrupting, that block out the starlight. Sometimes, in the distance, bright lights explode across the darkness, fireworks snapping into flares of light that momentarily stain the light green or red or gold. They sound like cannons.

Lu Han watches his own skin turn crimson in the glow, listens to the boom of sound, and finally, abruptly, stands. He and Chanyeol have adjoining rooms, but Lu Han’s door is shut tight against invasion, and Chanyeol hasn’t tried to come and see him. He could go around, but their rooms are guarded. Not well, of course.

Lu Han slips out into the hallway, smiling sweetly, viciously, and the guards let him pass with little more than weak objections. Their job is to protect him after all, and besides, they know that Lu Han is a killer and they are not. There’s nothing they can do to him that even remotely scares Lu Han.

It’s almost offensive how easily he strides past them, making his way down the hallway to the next door. He raps his knuckles against the wood, knocking once, twice, hardly loud enough to be heard from inside, much less acknowledged. And even if it had been heard, he barely waits a second before he smiles and pulls out his knife.

The guards startle a little, looking back and forth, clearly concerned that he has managed to sneak a weapon past them, but they don’t seem to know what to do to stop him, not when he already has it out. Instead, they let him slide the knife into the doorjamb and sweep it down, catching the latch and pulling it open. The handle turns easily under his fingers and he slips inside before they can even try to stop him, letting the door close behind him blocking out the panicked faces of the guards who are very much about to fail their sole job of keeping the victors safe.

With the door closed, Lu Han takes a moment to take stock of his surroundings, only mildly interested, mostly just taking note of hiding places or possible choke points. There aren’t many. The rooms are laid out all alike, the sprawl of the room a direct mirror of Lu Han’s own, only lacking the connecting door in the wall. Xiumin’s room is isolated, no escape but for the door Lu Han had just come through, guards standing outside to keep him “safe” which really only means keeping him inside.

It hardly matters; Xiumin looks like he’s barely moved since he was led to this room. He’s sitting on the bed, legs curled up to his chest, hands pulling his head down to crush them against his knees. It’s a pathetic shape, but even funnier somehow is the long shape of the phone cord, pulled from both the wall and the phone itself, curved into some mockery of a noose that does nothing when there’s absolutely nothing high enough nor sturdy enough in these rooms to hang himself from. The Capitol knows better than to put fresh victors into positions where they could actually kill themselves.

Fortunately, they’re not too good at that either, because Lu Han still has his knife in his hand, the weight familiar in his palm, and Xiumin is sitting there, hardly looking up when Lu Han slips further into the room.

“Hello, cutie,” he coos, dropping to his knees on the bed. He sits there sweetly, watching as Xiumin glances his way, seemingly on instinct, before dropping his head again. Lu Han pouts at him. “Didn’t you miss me? I’ve missed you.”

“Fuck off,” Xiumin groans, voice too weak to actually be threatening. He bows himself further down, curling away from Lu Han who shuffles closer, bed dipping under his weight. His mouth curls up, eyes sweeping over Xiumin’s frame. He’s wearing a white shirt, and it hangs a little on his frame, making him look small and delicate in a way that Lu Han knows he isn’t. He wants it off of him.

“Don’t be like that,” he says, leaning in, his fingers curling around Xiumin’s shoulders. Xiumin jerks, arms unwinding, coming up to claw at the backs of Lu Han’s hands, trying to pry them off. Lu Han only digs his fingers in insistently and pushes Xiumin back hard, crawling on top of him to straddle him while Xiumin scrabbles at his hands for a moment before letting them drop. He goes all but limp, crossing his arms over his face to hide himself from Lu Han who blinks at him before sneering. “Like hiding has ever gotten you anything.”

“Why won’t you just fucking  _ kill me _ ?” Xiumin strangles out, words muffled a little by his arms, but Lu Han can understand him well enough that the question makes him laugh, amused by Xiumin’s protest that, “That was what you wanted from the beginning! Just fucking kill me!”

“I wanted to hurt you first,” Lu Han reminds him, reaching down, stroking a hand through the top of his hair. Xiumin tries weakly to knock it away, but he seems to wisely be more concerned with keeping his face covered. Still, he can’t fully protect himself, and Lu Han knots his fingers into Xiumin’s hair and yanks his head back hard, his other hand bringing his knife up to slide the flat of it between Xiumin’s arms, scratching his skin in the process and prying Xiumin’s arms away from his face with the threat of being cut.

He manages to drag Xiumin’s arms away, batting at his hands with the knife when they try to return to their previous position, and Xiumin sucks in a harsh breath when his fingers quickly become cut and bloody, dropping down and staining the pretty white bedspread with blood. Lu Han lays his knife to Xiumin’s skin, dragging a thin line of split skin up from his throat to the center of his chin, a smile curling his lips. “You shouldn’t have been so good to hurt.”

Xiumin chokes out a sound that’s very close to a laugh but completely, utterly humorless. “Fuck you,” he says, voice harsher now. “Don’t you dare act like this is anyone’s fault but yours.”

“Oh? Isn’t it?” Lu Han asks, tilting his head curiously, tapping Xiumin’s chin with the sharp of the blade in a way that makes Xiumin tilt his head further into the fist Lu Han has wound in his hair. Lu Han tugs on it, mostly for something to do between one sentence and the next. “It’s not  _ my _ fault you’re dumb enough to love people you can’t protect. Maybe if you were smart enough not to care about them, they would have died a less painful death.”

“Shut up!” Xiumin snarls, eyes full of rage and pain. “You would have killed him anyways, even if you weren’t obsessed with me. You’re a fucking murderer. You killed Jongup for no reason. You killed all of them, people who didn’t even—“

“Don’t act like it’s them you’re angry about. You didn’t give a shit about them, did you? Not the way you cared about Tao,” Lu Han adds to stop Xiumin’s protest that of course he had, because Lu Han knows that as guilty as Xiumin feels about that, it’s not the same as the rage he had held when Lu Han had killed Lay or Tao or any of the ones he really cared about. Those are the ones Xiumin really feels still, the ones that make him still feel hatred for Lu Han despite how much he tries to not feel anything at all. Lu Han has learned all the places that hurt Xiumin worst, both physical and emotional.

“Not the way you cared about your pretty little love from home. What was his name? Lay?” he asks, pretending not to know, just so he can see Xiumin’s face crumple at the mention of his name.

“He was crying for me, you know,” Lu Han tacks on, pretending at innocent conversation. “Before you ever showed up. He was sobbing for me not to do it, that he didn’t want to fight me, like he thought he might be able to. But no, you were the fighter. You were his protector. So I slit his pretty throat because I knew it would make you come for me. I knew killing them would bring you right to me.”

Xiumin chokes on his answer, whatever answer that might be, and his face goes blotchy with rage and pain. His hands snap up, palms bracing against Lu Han’s shoulders, trying to shove him away, but Lu Han only pushes down against his hands, smiling widely. “Oh, you’re beautiful. You did it too. You came right to me, and here you are.”

“Shut up!” Xiumin yells again, voice higher now, louder. It cracks in the middle, just a little, and Lu Han wonders, if he cut back the skin on Xiumin’s neck, would he be able to see his vocal chords, see what made Xiumin’s voice break like that? If he plucked at Xiumin’s vocal chords, would they vibrate like the strings of some new and fantastic musical instrument? And oh, more than that, could Lu Han learn to play it?

"Why?” he asks, trailing the tip of his blade down into the dip of his throat. Xiumin is still much thinner than he was when they first came to the Capitol, more gaunt than fit, and the curvature of his throat forms a little hollow. Lu Han could dig the blade in, fill it with blood. He could probably drink from it, if he’s honest. Well, maybe not; Xiumin does tend to thrash and strain a little too much for that, especially when it’s his throat. Lu Han realizes belatedly that perhaps he should have picked a way to kill Xiumin’s friend that wouldn’t have interfered with all the things he’d like to do to Xiumin now.

“Shut up,” says Xiumin, just that one little statement over and over, like he thinks that repeating it might eventually make Lu Han listen. It won’t, of course it won’t, and Lu Han leans in to drag his tongue over the press of Xiumin’s jugular against his skin, waiting to see if Xiumin will give him more. He doesn’t, just goes still and quiet under Lu Han, and Lu Han knows if he moved his mouth, just a little, he would find Xiumin’s pulse rabbiting in his throat, fear evident no matter how stone-faced Xiumin gets.

“ _ Why? _ ” Lu Han insists, word muffled against the thin flesh of Xiumin’s throat, and he bites at it a bit irritably, not liking the way it comes out, but not willing to pull away. Xiumin flinches, hard enough that Lu Han’s knife pricks him, and he gasps in shock at the pain that he’s essentially caused himself, going still. Lu Han smiles. “Why should I? It’s not like I’m telling you anything you don’t already know. You already knew that you didn’t care about them. Do you think if you had, they’d still be alive? Don’t fool yourself. I was going to take everything from you whether you cared or not.”

Lu Han is expecting Xiumin to yell again, to tell him that same phrase, because Xiumin seems stuck on a loop, but Xiumin is full of surprises as always. He lets out a mangled noise, something that even Lu Han doesn’t know what it means, and then asks, “ _ Why? _ ”

“Why…?” Lu Han asks, blinking a few times, pulling his head back to stare at Xiumin in mild panic. “Why what?”

“Why me? Why do you hate me so much? Why did you do all of this to me?”

“I…” Lu Han starts, and then stops, frowning, biting his lip hard enough that it threatens blood. It would be better right now. It would be so much better. “I don’t hate you.”

“Then  _ why _ ?” Xiumin says, and Lu Han can place the tone of his voice, the tone of his sounds, now. He’s pleading.

Lu Han shivers. “Because I want you. Because you’re like me. Because I’m supposed to hurt you, because you’re a weapon like me.”

“I’m  _ not _ like you!” Xiumin says, cringing away. “I’m not—”

“You would have killed him too,” Lu Han interrupts, viciously. “Your precious little One that you cared about so much. Tao, was it?” That crumple again, as Lu Han pretends to search for a name he can’t forget. “If he had come close to your lovely little Lay, no matter why, no matter what he wanted, you would have ripped his throat out. Because it’s what you were supposed to do. Because you were his weapon.”

“I’m not a weapon!” Xiumin shouts, though he sounds more fearful than angry. “I’m a fucking person. And Lay is my friend! I love him! That’s why I’m supposed to protect him!”

“Was.” Lu Han wants to bite his face off with his teeth. He wants to go back and find Lay’s body and rip it to shreds because what had he ever done to earn this? Xiumin is _ Lu Han’s. _ “He’s dead. You  _ failed _ .”

“ _ You _ killed him.” Xiumin argues, and he pushes up against Lu Han so hard that Lu Han almost overbalances, almost topples over, only holding on by digging his knees in around Xiumin’s waist. It’s hard enough to bruise, and Xiumin grunts, falling back.

Lu Han smiles and leans back over him, fingers brushing over his upper arms like a caress, relaxing at Xiumin’s reactions, the way Xiumin is centering himself around Lu Han all over again. “Yes, I did,” he says, perfectly pleased with himself. “And I’d do it again to get you under me like this.”

Xiumin jerks again, trying to buck him off, but it’s more perfunctory this time. He knows he’s failed, that he’s not going to throw Lu Han off now.

“What happened, Xiumin?” He asks, when Xiumin stops struggling under him. “I thought you wanted to hurt me.”

“I want to rip you to goddamn shreds,” Xiumin spits, full of malice.

Lu Han beams. “Do it, then.”

That’s clearly not what Xiumin is expecting. He goes still, more frozen than he already was. It’s a stiff kind of stillness, corpse-like, and Lu Han admires the way it looks on him, even if it’s not quite true to life. Or death, as the case may be.

“Don’t you want to?” he prompts, when he’s done admiring the aesthetic of it and Xiumin hasn’t moved yet.

“You’re making fun of me,” Xiumin accuses, finally, eyes not quite focused. Lu Han’s sure he’s imagining it, all the things he’d like to do, and he appreciates the way he’s starting to sharpen all of Xiumin’s shattered edges into sharp little weapons of their own.

“Mm,” Lu Han hums. “Not in the way you think. I’ll let you hurt me, if you’d like.”

Xiumin takes a shuddering breath and then squeezes his eyes closed. “Why? What’s to stop me from stabbing you through the throat and leaving you here.”

“Not much,” Lu Han agrees, nonchalant. “But Channie knows me well. He loves me, you know. Or he’d like to. And he’s killed before. Before the games, I mean. We all have. He won’t mind doing it again after.”

Xiumin lets out a bitter laugh. “That’s not a threat. I want to die. You know I want to die.”

“I do,” Lu Han agrees. “But you still have that little bit of you left, the one that’s determined to protect the people you love. And there are some, I know. Someone that will be sitting right there in the front row of Eleven. A father, maybe. A mother…”

Xiumin’s breathing stutters. It’s almost nothing, almost well hidden. But Lu Han’s sitting on him, can feel the rise and fall of his body as he breaths, and his fingers are close enough that they can drift up, skid over his pulse. It’s fast, though that doesn’t mean much when Xiumin is so constantly afraid. It’s in his breathing though, his eyes. Lu Han scratches a little at his throat, like he would a pet cat.

“If you’re alright with that,” he proposes, “then go ahead and kill me.”

“I should,” Xiumin breaths, voice full of longing. “I should murder you in this fucking bed. It would save so many people from getting hurt.”

But they both know the truth. Xiumin doesn’t give a damn about those people, not the way he cares about whoever he has left. It’s actually a rather selfish outlook, but Lu Han doesn’t mind. It’s a little charming actually. Xiumin doesn’t care until he cares  _ so much _ , and Lu Han finds it a little touching how much Xiumin cares about him.

And Xiumin does care about him; no one hates so fervently without caring.

“Would it?” Lu Han asks. “Would it save anyone you love?”

Xiumin doesn’t answer him. That’s answer enough in itself.

“Go ahead,” Lu Han offers, and takes his knife from Xiumin’s skin, pressing the hilt of it into Xiumin’s hand now, curling his fingers around it. For a moment, their hands are interlaced as Lu Han carefully positions Xiumin’s grip, making sure he’s holding the knife right, and Lu Han expects Xiumin to yank away, but he is perfectly still, unmoving but for the motions that Lu Han is guiding him into. In the end, Lu Han is the one that pulls away, rolling off of Xiumin, waiting.

“How do you know I won’t hurt myself?” Xiumin chokes, shaking. “How do you know I won’t just cut my throat?”

“Mm,” Lu Han replies, shrugging. “I think I know you a little better than that. Give me some credit. You won’t die now until you’ve satisfied that little urge in you, the one who wants more than anything to make me hurt the way you have. Or, well, physical pain, at least. Not quite the perfect trade-off, but you’ll take it, in the end.”

“I shouldn’t,” Xiumin says, voice wavering, but he’s rolling onto his knees despite that, fingers tightening on the blade. Lu Han can see it in his face. He feels powerful like this. They both know it’s merely a pretense, but at least he feels it. “You like it — being hurt. It’s not really going to do anything.”

“To me? No, not particularly,” Lu Han says with a shrug. “But haven’t you wanted to watch me scream for weeks now? I can at least do that for you.”

Xiumin is still for a moment longer, and then, finally, Lu Han feels the edge of the blade against his skin, the tip at the hollow of his throat. He tips his chin up, exposing his throat obligingly, feels the tip of the blade dig in until there is a single point of pain and Lu Han is shaking. It sweeps down, down, a hot line of agony, and Lu Han whimpers and arches toward Xiumin’s touch, toward the hand that Xiumin presses into his hips hard enough to bruise.

“Don’t,” Xiumin spits, the word full of vitriol. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Don’t what?” Lu Han gasps, word tapering into a mewl of pleasure-pain as Xiumin cuts harder, deeper, slicing Lu Han’s skin open. Blood drips heavily, soaking into the white sheets in a spreading stain. Lu Han rocks into the pain, into the knife, and Xiumin wrenches away, sneering down at him.

“Don’t fucking lean into this. You… you’re letting me hurt you, so let me do it,” Xiumin says, voice quivering a little. It must pain him to admit that much, that even now Lu Han holds so much of the power.

But Lu Han likes this game well enough. He’s willing to play along. “Hurt me then,” he groans, dropping his head back to arch fervently into Xiumin. “You hurt me, and I’ll stop.”

It’s a deal that Xiumin has no choice but to take, too far down this rabbit hole now to climb back out safely. He leans over, leans in, knife sliding over Lu Han’s skin, pressed deep enough that it slices gashes that won’t easily heal. Lu Han whimpers. “Ah—” he breathes, when Xiumin’s cuts take him to Lu Han’s inner thigh. “Not too hard. You’ll get in trouble if you cut the vein.”

Xiumin stares at him for a long moment, pressing fractionally harder, skin splitting, and Lu Han drops his legs open in allowance. Xiumin drags the knife down, hard, fast, but the amount of blood isn’t deadly. Lu Han keens, high in his throat.

It’s a long while before Xiumin drops the knife, the blade thumping with a dull wet noise to the blankets. They’re red, all the way through, likely down to the mattress. There’s so much red on white, blood oozing thickly across the bloodless pallor of Lu Han’s skin. Chanyeol would be horrified to see him this far gone, but Lu Han is quivering with delight, and the sound of Xiumin stopping makes him whine frantically, reaching up and trying to grapple for Xiumin.

Xiumin jerks away, shaking his head. He’s covered in blood too. His hands and forearms are decorated in it, gleaming red on his wrists, smudged across the rest of his arm in splatters that go almost all the way to his elbow. His legs, his knees especially, are soaked where he’s been kneeling in it. There are a few dots of blood along his cheek and jaw.

Lu Han sits up slowly, the pain making his eyes flutter closed and his jaw tense. “Oh,” he breathes, the words thick, slurred. He’s a little dizzy, a lot exhausted. It’s surprisingly calming. “Don’t worry so much.”

“You’re done,” Xiumin spits, shaking his head. “I’m not going to kill you. You’re not worth it.”

“Mmm,” Lu Han agrees faintly, mostly to the not dying thing. “Good boy. Do you feel better now?”

“Don’t—” Xiumin hisses through his teeth, standing up. He walks away and Lu Han hears the shower start. He whimpers at the thought of all his blood being washed away, imagines tugging Xiumin down with him among the blood stained sheets and fucking him until Xiumin is as sated as Lu Han is right now.

He thinks about jerking off, using the blood still thick and dripping on his thighs as lube, but it seems a lot of effort right now. Instead he curls in among the blood and waits until he hears Xiumin coming back to peer at him.

He’s small, pale. All the bravery is gone, and he looks a little fragile in the dim lighting. He looks lost.

“Come to bed,” Lu Han murmurs, sitting up slowly, reaching out to Xiumin with one arm like a lover, the other hand stretched behind him to brace himself on the bed. Blood wells up between Lu Han’s fingers from the pressure.

Xiumin shivers, and Lu Han can see gooseflesh rising on his arms. “Don’t act like…” he says, and Lu Han supposes that it was intended to be fierce, but Xiumin’s hair is damp, he’s wearing nothing but his underwear, and the cuts on his bare skin are stark and red. He looks alarmingly tiny.

Lu Han’s brow furrows. It’s a strange look on Xiumin, one he doesn’t think he likes.

Xiumin turns away from him, walking to the window. It doesn’t open, but that doesn’t stop Xiumin from crawling up onto the sill, curling there with another shudder. He looks out over the city, his face reflected in the glass, and Lu Han wonders if Xiumin knows that Lu Han can see the wetness clinging to his lashes from more than just the shower.

Lu Han peels himself off of the sheets. He has to rip the cloth off forcibly in places where drying blood has glued it to his skin. It stings, yanking on his injuries, and Lu Han makes a soft noise of contentment in his throat.

He stands, padding across the room, blood dripping in his wake. Xiumin’s eyes flicker to him, just for a moment, but otherwise he ignores him until Lu Han is at his side. He jerks away then, pulling towards the cool glass as Lu Han goes to his knees, nuzzling at Xiumin’s bare thighs.

“Don’t touch me,” Xiumin says, knocking his knees sideways to try and dislodge Lu Han, but Lu Han holds fast. Xiumin stares at him for a long time before turning away again. His voice is small as he asks, for the second time this night, “Why?”

Lu Han smiles up at him beatifically. “Why not?”

—

The stylists are terrified. Chanyeol is furious. Everyone is more than a little frantic when Lu Han peels off his shirt the next day to change into his nice suit and they see the injuries littering him, just barely sealed shut.

Well, everyone but Xiumin. Xiumin looks almost vindicated, looking over Lu Han’s massacre of a body with something like pride.

The smallness from last night has mostly faded, and Xiumin is all but snarling at just about anyone who comes near. One of the stylists had begun fretting over his forearms, his sliced up hands, complaining of the visibility of the scars Lu Han had left and the way they look; Xiumin had very nearly bitten their head off. Metaphorically, of course, though there had been a dangerous amount of teeth in Xiumin’s refusal.

He hisses when Lu Han comes anywhere near him too, but they both know there’s nothing at all he can do to Lu Han that will actually ward off his attentions. He spends a great deal of time shoving Lu Han off with hateful sounds and fingers dug into the injuries he had left on Lu Han last night. It’s more for Xiumin’s sake, Lu Han thinks, or maybe just for the sake of appearances.

Either way, Lu Han couldn’t care less. He all but preens at the way that Xiumin looks at him once his shirt his off and his injuries are bare. He wonders if Xiumin is remembering making them or, perhaps, imagining making more. This thought alone makes Lu Han squirm with the need to get Xiumin alone and let him do it again.

But Chanyeol is furious, and he keeps a close eye on Lu Han. He knows — of course he does — exactly what Lu Han wants, and he’s refusing him. It would be infuriating if Lu Han couldn’t at least feed the urges by simply getting close enough to Xiumin for Xiumin to lash out with harsh touches that send pangs of agony shuddering down Lu Han’s spine. It settles his need a little, even if it doesn’t sate it.

Still, it’s not enough. It’s hard to focus, to think of much else, and by the time all three of them have been wrangled into suits and smeared with make up (a process that, between Xiumin’s spiteful refusal and Lu Han’s disinterested distraction takes far longer than it really should), Lu Han is wrapped half around Xiumin, purring at every violent touch and nuzzling in for more.

Chanyeol leads them out, looking nothing more than distasteful. They make their way, the three of them, into a large elaborate room. It’s vaguely familiar in that way that makes Lu Han think déjà vu until he hears Xiumin take a shaky breath and realizes that, yes, they have been here before. This is the room where he first saw Xiumin, all those weeks ago.

Lu Han beams. “It seems so long ago,” he murmurs to Xiumin. “Though I don’t imagine I’ll ever have had enough of you.”

Xiumin bears his teeth and elbows Lu Han hard, right in the center of his chest where Xiumin had cut him open. Lu Han giggles, a bit breathless. “Careful, cutie. You’ll make me bleed on this nice suit, and everyone will see.”

There’s a subtle threat there, of course. Many would understand, but Lu Han knows they televised his particular interests and reactions, and with how Lu Han holds to Xiumin, enough would see Xiumin’s hurting Lu Han for something they both drew their own sick pleasure from. Essentially, exactly what it is. Lu Han knows that Xiumin doesn’t want that.

True to form, Xiumin subsides, only faintly wriggling in a show of protest. It’s sweet, and Lu Han nuzzles at him adoringly until Chanyeol has to step in and pull him away.

“We have an appearance to make,” Chanyeol reminds him, and it’s not like Lu Han cares, but people begin to come in, draped in fancy Capitol garb. Their eyes immediately go to the three of them, and Xiumin goes pale, shaking faintly. He sways on his feet like he can’t find his center of balance. His jaw is tight, hands white-knuckled and trembling so badly that they’re nearly vibrating. It’s a good look on him.

“Okay,” Lu Han hums acquiescently, earning a suspicious look from Chanyeol, but Lu Han only pries one of Xiumin’s hands open and laces their fingers. He ignores the way Xiumin fights to take his hand back, enjoying the crescents of pain that Xiumin digs into the back of his hand with his nails. He squeezes Xiumin’s hand. “Let’s go make an appearance.”

—

The party itself is hideously boring. So many Capitol people want to meet them like they’re some kind of twisted celebrities, but so many of them shy away from Lu Han for long moments before trying to speak. By that time, Lu Han has already gauged and dismissed them out of hand.

A few of them though…

It’s mostly the ex-victors, Lu Han notes, that don’t seem afraid to meet his eyes. There are a lot of Ones in among this crowd, one or two Twos, and none of them seem worried to approach. Most of them size him up, like they think they might be able to fight him if need be. That’s more funny than anything, and Lu Han smiles at them in reply, sweet and sharp and deadly, visibly unperturbed by them.

The best are the ones who come over to greet them and glance not at Lu Han but at Xiumin. Their eyes are consistently full of something like pity, maybe a little disdain, but mostly it’s clear how very sorry they feel for him. It only lasts a moment. For as placidly as Xiumin stands beside him, allowing Lu Han to grip tight to his limp palm, the moment a stranger comes near, looking at him with that look, Xiumin turns almost feral.

“Get the  _ fuck _ away from me!” he spits at one, teeth bared in a snarl, rocking forward on the balls of his feet like he means to leap at them. Technically Lu Han’s hand holds him back, but they both know Lu Han wouldn’t actually restrain him, and when Xiumin lurches too far forward, the man stumbles back. Lu Han giggles and draws Xiumin back into his arms, pressing his face into the back of Xiumin’s neck until Xiumin shakes himself free of all but Lu Han’s hand, head down, looking sick and shamefaced.

Plenty shy away after that.

“You’re going to have to learn how to stay sheathed,” Lu Han says, squeezing Xiumin’s hand tight enough to feel the bones grind.

Xiumin groans low in his throat and digs his thumbnail hard into the flesh between Lu Han’s thumb and forefinger. Lu Han inhales a pleased gasp, and Xiumin stops instantly. “I’m not like you,” he bites out. “Don’t talk to me like I’m like you.”

Lu Han hums noncommittally. “I will once you stop having such obvious edges,” he replies. “How could you be anything but a weapon when you’re so ready to cut anyone who tries to touch you?”

“Shut up!” Xiumin hisses, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment before forcing them open again. “Don’t—“

And while normally Xiumin cuts himself off after that word anyways, apparently unable to come up with a full statement to follow up his rebuttal, this time there’s at least a reason for his sudden silence.

There’s a man approaching, a One by the look of him. He’s looking at Xiumin, but there’s no pity in his eyes, no disdain. No, the look there is hatred, pure and simple, aimed directly at Xiumin. He stops in front of them, fists tight with anger. “Xiumin,” he greets, all venom. “Do you know who I am?”

“Zhou Mi,” Xiumin moans, sounding as pained as he ever has at Lu Han’s touch.

Lu Han bristles, looking between them with growing fury. What right does this fucking One have to make Xiumin sound like that?

“You killed my fiancé,” Zhou Mi spits, looking down at Xiumin. Xiumin doesn’t argue, doesn’t fight, barely even breaths. He sways on his feet, and Lu Han would expect his hands to be fisted, but they’re limp at his sides, limp in Lu Han’s grasp.

“I know,” Xiumin says, voice breaking on the words, pain in every feature of his face. It’s too much. Too deep. Xiumin looks gutted in a way Lu Han only achieves when he mentions Lay or T- _ Oh _ .

“Your Tao was someone else’s first,” Lu Han laughs, and Xiumin flinches like he’s been struck. Or, well, no. That’s not quite right. Xiumin hardly flinches from actual pain anymore.

“Lu Han, don’t,” Xiumin breathes in reply, and Lu Han sees Zhou Mi’s lip curl at this willing interaction, but Xiumin’s eyes are somewhere near their joined hands. “Leave Tao out of—“

He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t even move. Xiumin is suddenly and intensely still when Zhou Mi hits him, and the sound of flesh on flesh rings out too loud for a moment. It’s a long, still second, long enough to draw attention, and it’s like the whole room inhales, holding its breath, waiting.

Lu Han exhales first. “Don’t you  _ touch _ him!” he shrieks, voice loud and very nearly inhuman. “Don’t you ever fucking touch him! He’s  _ mine _ ! I’ll  _ kill _ you!”

He lurches forward, seeing red, fully intent to rip out the man apart, spitting threats. “I’ll cut your tongue out! I’ll tear your heart out of your fucking chest! Fuck you!” he screams, above the murmur of distressed noise starting up around him.

Like a dream, he hears Chanyeol say his name from too far away, too far to stop him, too far to prevent Lu Han’s carnage, too far to keep him from tearing this man’s throat out with his teeth.

How  _ dare _ he touch Xiumin. How  _ dare _ he hurt him! How  _ dare _ — “I’ll rip out your intestines and ram them down your throat until you choke! I’ll rip your hands off one bone at a time so you can’t  _ ever _ —“

He reaches the end of his ability to move, yanked back by one arm, and he snarls in fury, whirling to lash out at Chanyeol and make him let go of him. He’ll kill Chanyeol if it lets him free to hurt this man who dared to touch his Xiumin.

It’s not Chanyeol.

Xiumin holds him fast, fingers laced through Lu Han’s, grip tight enough to bruise. Even as Lu Han had let him free for the first time tonight, he clings to Lu Han’s hand, pulling Lu Han back.

His other hand comes up, trembling, to cup Lu Han’s cheek, the touch almost gentle. “Lu Han,” he whispers, voice shaking. “Lu Han, stop. Don’t hurt him.”

Xiumin looks small and fragile and lost, just the way he did last night, and there’s something so sad in his eyes. But he’s touching Lu Han without fear, without anger, without that strange emptiness he sometimes has. He’s looking at Lu Han with a tired acceptance in his gaze. His fingers are soft on Lu Han’s face and tight on Lu Han’s hand, and Lu Han is distracted enough for the anger to calm.

Someone pulls Zhou Mi away, probably for the better, but Lu Han’s too busy staring at Xiumin. He stares at him for a long time and then smiles sweetly. “Of course, my love,” he murmurs, nuzzling Xiumin’s palm, watching Xiumin’s face go so pale he might as well be bloodless. “Anything for you.”

Xiumin pulls him away, to the bathroom, and Lu Han watches as Xiumin dry heaves into the sink, shaking. He doesn’t push Lu Han away though, not even when Lu Han pulls off Xiumin’s shirt and jacket. He merely stays still and lets Lu Han claw his nails down Xiumin’s bare back, lets him drape himself over Xiumin. They stay there for a long time, Lu Han kissing Xiumin’s throat as he weeps silently into the polished countertops.

—

It’s rather funny that no one seems to realize that sticking the three of them into a confined space together might be a poor idea. Well, Chanyeol realizes it but says nothing, and Xiumin knows that no amount of protest will earn him reprieve. Meanwhile, Lu Han has never been so delighted. But none of the Capitol people say anything until they’re already on the train on the way to Twelve, and by then there’s no way at all to stop Lu Han from slipping into Xiumin’s room each night with a smile on his lips and a knife in his hand.

The knife doesn’t always stay in Lu Han’s hand either. By the time they get to Twelve, Lu Han is fairly sure he has more scar tissue than skin. Not that Xiumin’s unscathed by any means. Xiumin has plenty of scars of his own, and not even a half of them visible on his skin. Lu Han thinks if he could see inside Xiumin’s head he would be able to trace the spider-web lines where Xiumin is fracturing, piece by piece.

If possible, it gets worse when they get out into Twelve. They’ve given them masks to protect them from the pollution, given them pretty words to say that Chanyeol will take care of for them; all Xiumin has to do is stand there. But Lu Han sees his shoulders shaking all too quickly, sees Xiumin rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, sees all the little self-comfort techniques that he has learned to see in Xiumin. He looks out into the crowd to see a young boy crying and wailing for his father.

“Don’t let it bother you, my love,” Lu Han murmurs, and Xiumin jerks a little at the name, hanging his head. It bothers him so, and Lu Han can’t help himself but to use it. “I don’t even think he was one of the ones I killed. I don’t recall murdering a Twelve, though that’s questionable at best.”

“Stop,” Xiumin breathes, turning his face away. “Be respectful of the dead.”

“Why?” Lu Han asks. “They’re dead. They’re gone. What does it bother them that I use their names?”

Lu Han can’t make out all of the displeasure Xiumin’s face behind the mask, but he feels it that night when Xiumin presses harder with the knife, so hard that Lu Han shakes and sighs under him, trembling apart at Xiumin’s hand.

—

Lu Han wonders if Xiumin can feel all of the blood on his hands now, as they get closer to Eleven. Xiumin falls silent hours before they arrive, sitting by himself and staring at his fingers as if they aren’t his own. For the first time in days, when Lu Han comes near him, Xiumin cringes away from him instead of lashing out. It would be maddening if it weren’t a little amusing.

“What do you think?” Lu Han purrs conversationally, coming up behind Xiumin and wrapping his arms tight around his shoulders, nosing down into the curve of Xiumin’s throat. He sets his teeth there too, considering biting until he tastes blood, but he realizes he hasn’t finished his sentence and pulls off without doing much more than leaving shallow red impressions of his teeth. “Will they be proud of you for coming home? Standing beside me? Will they praise you for being alive when all the rest of them are dead? When you watched them die? When you did nothing to save a single one of them?”

Xiumin doesn’t reply, just lets out a quiet noise of shallow distress. Lu Han holds him tighter before he realizes that Xiumin isn’t pulling away.

“Let him be,” says Chanyeol from across the room, eyeing the two of them. “You’re far too close to home for either of you to survive one of you having the knife right now.”

Lu Han casts him a look, irritated and dismissive, and turns his attentions back to Xiumin at once, licking up Xiumin’s jaw. “Is he right, my love? If I give you the knife now, will you kill me?”

“No,” Xiumin breathes, softly, head down. His voice sounds raw. “I’ll kill myself.”

“Oh?” Lu Han says, considering. “After all this, really?” He presses the knife into Xiumin’s hand, just to see.

Xiumin stares down at his own hand like it doesn’t belong to him, like he’s waiting for it to move on it’s own. It’s a few long seconds before he seems to realize he’ll have to actively lift it if he wants to to move. He raises the knife a few inches and then sets it back in his lap, fingers going loose on the handle.

Lu Han smiles. “It was a good attempt,” he purrs, picking the knife back out of Xiumin’s hand and bringing it to his jaw, pressing the sharp of it into the fleshy underside of Xiumin’s jaw. “Do you want me to do it for you?”

Xiumin is quiet for a very long time before he shuts his eyes. “I don’t care.”

Lu Han looks at him for a while, considering, listening to Xiumin’s breathing, slow and trembling.

“I care,” he says finally, and lifts the knife to a safer place before pulling it hard and fast across Xiumin’s cheekbone. Xiumin gasps, eyes flying open and fingers darting up to touch his now bleeding cheek, the knife wound clear and evident on his face.

Lu Han leans in and licks Xiumin’s cheek. He swallows thickly, the taste of Xiumin’s blood heady in his mouth. “Don’t worry, my love,” he says, patting Xiumin’s cheek and feeling the blood smear thickly. “You’ll get the answer right eventually.”

—

Eleven is a nice district. It smells of growing things, of nature. It’s a beautiful place.

More beautiful is the way Xiumin steps off the train, lets out a butchered sob of agony, and tries his hardest to retreat.

Lu Han grabs his wrist, tightening his fingers around Xiumin’s wrist firmly. “Hush, my love,” he says, voice pitched gentle enough that it makes Xiumin’s jaw set, his fists ball. “I’m right here.”

He lifts his thumb to Xiumin’s face, ostensibly wiping away a tear, but his finger only sweeps over the cut on Xiumin’s face, rubbing away the makeup they’ve managed to smear over it and leaving it red and raw and visible on Xiumin’s face. He hears one of the stylists start to fret, but he merely sends her a sweet smile. “He looks prettier like this.”

Xiumin doesn’t fight him, though he does push Lu Han’s hand away from his face. Lu Han giggles. “Don’t you think, Xiumin?”

Xiumin looks towards the stylist, face shuttered, mouth a flat line. “It’s fine,” he answers. “It’s fine like this.”

“Good boy,” Lu Han teases, and drops his hand from Xiumin’s wrist to his hands, urging the boy forward with a smile. “Don’t you want to see your family?”

“Fuck you,” Xiumin chokes out, but he follows Lu Han and Chanyeol up onto the stage, head down and eyes fixed firmly on the floor. He doesn’t look up, not until they start the ceremony, with Chanyeol making the perfunctory speech for them all, and Lu Han elbows him none-too-gently in the side.

“Look at them, Xiumin. Look at how many of them keep looking at you,” Lu Han murmurs to him, eyes flickering from Xiumin to the crowd and back. “This is your home, isn’t it? Don’t you want them to see you?”

“No,” Xiumin breaths out, shivering slightly, eyes downcast.

Lu Han smiles. “Be a good boy,” he reminds him, touching his back too gently, gently enough that it makes Xiumin arch away from him, breath stuttering and hands shaking. Lu Han strokes down his spine slowly and asks, “Is that your mother in the front row?”

Xiumin’s head jerks up so fast that Lu Han is honestly a little confused by it, but Xiumin only looks out at the front row and gives a tiny, bitter little smile. It’s mocking, though Lu Han doesn’t know exactly what it mocks. He has a feeling it might be Xiumin himself.

“My mother is dead,” Xiumin answers him after a long moment, turning his head away. “Every family I ever had is dead, Lu Han.”

It’s the first time since the Capitol that Xiumin has said his name, and it makes Lu Han smile, neither softly nor sweetly. The smile is all teeth, sharklike, and he winds his arms around Xiumin, relishes in the momentary squirming before Xumin settles, head down once more. Lu Han leans in to whisper in his ear and takes the opportunity to bite, hard, on the shell of cartilage there, listening to Xiumin suck in air in surprise. “Look at them, my love,” he hisses. “I won’t tell you again.”

Xiumin looks at them, from Lu Han’s arms, and Lu Han hooks his chin on Xiumin’s shoulder and follows his gaze to a woman who has started sobbing in the front row. He considers her looks for a moment, contemplating, and then hums in Xiumin’s ear. “Lay’s mother, then?” he asks, remembering the ghost of Lay in the maze. “I could kill her, you know. Take away the last thing stopping you from cutting me down. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“It would,” Xiumin breathes, voice quivering, hands shaking. Reluctantly, beautifully, he leans himself back into Lu Han and grinds an elbow into his stomach. “I’ll kill you first if you think of touching her.”

Lu Han giggles. “Oh, there’s my Xiumin,” he purrs, pressing a kiss to Xiumin’s cheek that he doesn’t fight, though he does stomp hard on Lu Han’s right foot in what is a truly pathetic attempt at backlash that Lu Han revels in. “I’ve missed you.”

Chanyeol has stopped talking, but Lu Han doesn’t let go, and the woman from the crowd takes only a step towards them before Xiumin is turning in Lu Han’s arms, pushing at his chest. “If you give me the knife tonight, I’ll slit your throat.”

Lu Han tilts his head to one side, lifting his fingers and smoothing them over Xiumin’s cut face, watching Xiumin’s features contort momentarily in pain. “Oh, yes, please,” he purrs. “I’d like to see you try.”

—

Xiumin doesn’t, in fact, cut Lu Han’s throat that night, though Lu Han thinks it’s only because they’re still in Eleven until the next morning and the threat Lu Han made that first night in the hotel still hangs over Xiumin. After all, he has more of a target for Chanyeol now, should something go wrong.

That doesn’t keep Lu Han from wearing a pretty collar of cuts for the rest of the tour though, too shallow to kill, but clear enough that people draw away from all of them, unsure who might have caused this suffering to someone like Lu Han. Lu Han would love to smile and tell them it was consensual, though he’s not entirely sure that’s the word for it anymore.

Lu Han no longer enters Xiumin’s room with a smile and a knife. Often, he enters with a smile and finds Xiumin with the knife, waiting. Sometimes, if he waits long enough, forces himself to be good and sheathed and patient, Xiumin will come hunting him out. It’s a game of give and take now, one that Lu Han appreciates in a way that he can’t begin to express. Chanyeol had never shown up to him demanding to hurt Lu Han.

It’s why Lu Han could never be in love with Chanyeol the way he is Xiumin. It’s funny, he thinks, that Xiumin hates him so; hate and love are so very, unhappily close.

Lu Han likes to remind Xiumin of this when they’re both bloody and hurt and Xiumin shoves off Lu Han at every turn only to end up with Lu Han clinging to him through the night anyways. Lu Han likes to wake Xiumin up with kisses and murmurs of  _ I love you _ and watch the pain and rage that blossom in Xiumin’s eyes.

The rest of the districts are boring compared to that, though Xiumin looks shaken when they arrive in district Three to blank eyes and sorrow, because Lu Han remembers the name of the boy that Xiumin held in his arms and killed, so gently. He murmurs it near Xiumin’s ear sweetly as they stand on stage, asks, “Do you think they hate you for Suho? Or do you think some of them understood why you had to murder him the way you did?”

Xiumin hurts him so badly that night that Lu Han actually needs medical attention, Chanyeol stitching him up with hard eyes while Xiumin watches with cold ones and a snarl of, “He knows what he did.”

Lu Han can barely restrain his laughter enough to sit still for Chanyeol’s needle.

—

Two is a celebration. Of course it is. Why wouldn’t they celebrate their victors? Mostly, though, they cheer for Chanyeol who smiles and waves, who is allowed to construct his own speech for today.

Lu Han is once more on the sidelines, not that he cares. He’s having fun with Xiumin who looks out at the cheering crowd like he might skin them at any moment. Lu Han would probably let him, too. It would be amusing to see, at any rate.

Perhaps it’s those thoughts that make people shy away from them. Lu Han smiles at anyone who dares come near, and they flee like the hounds of hell are on their trail. It’s kind of funny, actually.

Lu Han see’s Sehun’s father in the crowd and laughs until he can hardly breathe. “Him I’d let you massacre,” he tells Xiumin with delight.

“You’d let me kill all of them,” Xiumin snaps back. “You’d probably help me.”

“You’re probably right,” Lu Han agrees, and kisses Xiumin until Xiumin bites through his lower lip in retaliation, Lu Han pulling away with a now bloody grin.

—

One is hilariously boring, in retrospect. The Ones are always so proper. They didn’t win, so they sulk, glaring at all of them.

Zhou Mi is nowhere to be seen, surprisingly, and Lu Han almost regrets it. He’d like another chance to rip him apart for touching what doesn’t belong to him. Xiumin doesn’t seem to care one way or another.

They leave for the Capitol after the ceremony, arrive in only a few short minutes, where they’re ushered into chairs for makeup and styling. They’re put in the clothes of their districts again, and Lu Han rather admires the way the clothes fit Xiumin, clinging in all the right spots.

Xiumin’s grown thin again. Not gaunt like he was in the maze, but thin. With so much of his energy going to healing himself, he doesn’t get nearly the nutrition he should. His cheeks are still chubby though, and there’s a harsh scar across one of them, faded to white since Eleven and cutting one side of his face up. It makes him look harsher, more true to life. Neither he nor Lu Han consent to letting it be covered by makeup.

“Tonight’s the last night,” Chanyeol tells them, during a pause. “After tonight, this ends. We go home. What are you going to do then?”

Lu Han hums noncommittally. He doesn’t care what they do, so long as he gets to keep Xiumin. He’s not done with him yet.

Xiumin doesn’t answer either. Lu Han doesn’t quite know the reason, though he bets a part of it is that Xiumin doesn’t know. Poor little thing’s lost his way. Lu Han is happy to keep pulling him down off the path.

—

They have a stage set up for them here too. It’s a huge show of useless finery. There are men and women (and some that Lu Han couldn’t possibly place if asked, and some that might be both or neither or something in between), all shown up to watch them, so far back that they can’t possibly all see. There are screens set up to help, and they play the intro graphic of the games over and over while Lu Han and Xiumin and Chanyeol are herded into place.

They aren’t even completely lined up before the screens are transitioning though, playing through the deaths. It would take too long to show all 57 of them, Lu Han knows. It will almost take too long to show Lu Han’s alone, but they’re doing it anyways, showing death after death, kill after kill. He watches faces that he doesn’t even remember dying, watches a few fall before the fun even really begins, just casualties in Lu Han and Chanyeol getting their weapons.

But then the fun does begin. The screen shows the trees, shows Lu Han torturing that other Eleven — the one whose name he doesn’t even remember. He hears Xiumin inhale a quick breath, but when he glances over, Xiumin is stone-faced, staring at the screen with an almost bland indifference.

That would make sense. Xiumin didn’t care about this one. But Xiumin certainly cares about what he knows is coming, and Lu Han takes Xiumin’s hand in his, squeezing their hands together. Xiumin jerks his arm hard, trying to yank away, but Lu Han holds him fast, tugging him in. “No. I want to watch you see it,” he breaths, digging his fingernails into the back of Xiumin’s hand. “I want to watch you watch him die.”

Xiumin shudders, but his eyes seem locked to the screen, like he doesn’t dare look away, not as, on screen, the image of Lu Han turns to the image of Lay. Lu Han smiles, sweetly. Next to him, Xiumin chokes on a noise that Lu Han hasn’t heard from him in a while.

“ _ Now then _ ,” he hears himself say onscreen, and he can’t help but grin, “ _ About you… _ ”

“Please don’t.” Lu Han hears the sentence, and for a moment he thinks that it’s all on screen, but next to him, Xiumin is shaking, whimpering, begging all the same. His words don’t quite match up perfectly, overlaying strangely, but he’s shaking slightly, fingers squeezing Lu Han’s hand so hard it hurts, mumbling under his breath, a series of quiet pleas that can never change what happened, what they’re showing them all right now.

“Xiuminnie,” Lu Han coos, leaning against him, petting him softly, like he can’t hear the words coming out of his own mouth on screen, the predatory little giggle of,  _ “Cute,”  _ that he had given only moments before slitting the boy’s throat.

Xiumin flinches, scratching long gouges down the back of Lu Han’s hand, nails ripping open Lu Han’s skin like claws. Lu Han moans quietly. “That’s it, love,” he murmurs. “Let it go.”

“Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Xiumin sobs, shaking, and Lu Han turns his attention away from Xiumin’s pretty friend crumpling on screen, ignoring it as it changes over to the next few kills, to Lu Han and Chanyeol methodically tearing people apart on screen. Instead, he pulls Xiumin close, tucks himself around Xiumin the way Xiumin is used to by now.

“I’m here,” he purrs, nuzzling at Xiumin’s neck. “I’ve got you. Just look.”

Xiumin does. Why, Lu Han will never know. It’s practically self-flagellation at this point, but god help him, Xiumin looks. He looks as the screen shows death after death when Lu Han cuts people up with none of the care that he’s shown Xiumin. He looks as it shows the knife in Tao’s stomache, as it shows Xiumin with a rock in his hand, smashing it over and over into Jongin’s face.

He looks and looks and keeps looking until it shows an unfamiliar cot, shows Tao lying there while Xiumin bawls over his prone form of his dying lover. Lu Han’s never actually seen Xiumin weep like that, not really, but it doesn’t matter. Lu Han can’t be jealous when Xiumin folds himself halfway over in Lu Han’s arms now, body shaking as he lets out the most butchered noise that Lu Han’s ever heard from him.

It’s not human, not really. It’s too jagged, like it’s tearing it’s way out of him. It sounds like something breaking deep inside of him, being funneled up through vocal chords that just barely make it capable of coming out of a human mouth. It’s precious, and Lu Han smiles as Xiumin shakes, letting out pathetic little sounds of pain as it goes on and on, Xiumin killing Taemin as well, Chanyeol and Lu Han killing over and over, killing Baekhyun and Chen, helping Xiumin to slit Suho’s throat, death after death after death.

Xiumin gags, deep in his throat, and Lu Han holds him as he shakes, vibrating with it. “Xiumin, my love,” Lu Han murmurs to him, and Xiumin make a jagged-edged noise again, worse than before. “Almost done.”

On screen, Sehun is threatening Xiumin, and then Lu Han is digging his fingers into Sehun’s eye sockets, crushing his skull with his hands, murdering him brutally, harshly. Xiumin doesn’t seem to care. Xiumin thuds his head back on Lu Han’s shoulder, hard enough to hurt.

Lu Han chokes on a moan of his own. “Cute,” he mumbles, and Xiumin lets out an inarticulate noise, dragging his fingernails up Lu Han’s arms hard enough that even Chanyeol notices, reaching out to shove at them. Lu Han smiles. “I don’t think Xiuminnie’s feeling well,” he says. “I think I should take him back to the hotel.”

“Lu Han…” Chanyeol says warningly.

Lu Han beams, but it’s Xiumin who answers, letting out a jagged noise. “Yeah. Yeah, I want to go.”

Chanyeol stares and then lets out a soft, unreadable noise. “Go then.”

Lu Han does.

The moment the film is over, the moment people are more distracted, he pulls Xiumin away, back outside, back to the hotel. This is their last night here, their last night on fancy white sheets that stain so nicely, and Lu Han intends to make the best of it.

Xiumin doesn’t protest. He stares at himself in the mirrored elevator, looking himself dead in the eyes. Lu Han smiles and winds himself around him, kissing his throat. Xiumin turns harshly, shoving him off, Lu Han’s back slamming into the mirrored wall with a shattering sound. Lu Han chokes out a laugh. “There’s my Xiuminnie,” he purrs, letting his head thud gently against the glass. “Do you get it now?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Xiumin snarls, pushing against him harder, slamming his palms into Lu Han’s shoulders hard enough that Lu Han feels the glass splinter.

Somewhere beside and above him, Lu Han hears the bell ding, and he giggles and pushes at Xiumin gently. “Come, my love,” he purrs. “We’ll do this right, now.”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Xiumin snaps, wild-eyed, fierce. “I hate you.”

“I love you, too,” Lu Han laughs, pushing harder until Xiumin gives in and lets Lu Han pull him out of the elevator and to the hotel room.

There’s no guards now. It’s for the best. No point in anyone stopping them.

They’re barely inside before Xiumin is shoving Lu Han back, hard, Lu Han tumbling to the floor with a burst of laughter as Xiumin climbs on top of him, hands winding into Lu Han’s hair, so tight that strands come away in his grasp when Lu Han moves too sharply upwards to crash their mouths together, hard and fierce.

“I promised you, didn’t I?” he asks, gasping the question into Xiumin’s mouth. “I told you.”

“Just do it, you psycho,” Xiumin snarls. “You better kill me tonight, or you won’t live until the morning.”

“I’m sure,” Lu Han purrs, leaning up into Xiumin still, lifting his arms to wind them up around Xiumin and gasping when Xiumin grabs them and slams Lu Han’s arms back to the floor by his wrists, the pressure making Lu Han arch up into Xiumin desperately, trying to rock their hips together.

“Don’t,” Xiumin snarls, tightening his grip, making Lu Han gasp. Xiumin doesn’t relent, not until Lu Han is squirming under him, and then his fingers flutter, just a little.

Lu Han arches, bucking Xiumin off onto the floor. He climbs on top of him, kneeling over his with his knees on either side of Xiumin’s body. He digs his fingers under the folds of Xiumin’s shirt and pulls hard until the buttons pop off, baring Xiumin’s chest. “I want to cut your heart out and keep it,” Lu Han says. “I want to eat it. I want you inside of me.”

“Fuck off,” Xiumin chokes, and his eyes are watery, his hands shaking. He pushes at Lu Han’s clothes as well, yanking at them until they come away, bunching awkwardly, letting his fingers dig into Lu Han’s shoulders, pulling down, hard and fast, leaving claw marks in long lines down Lu Han’s body.

“I want your whole heart,” Lu Han gasps, “even if I have to cut it out of you.”

“Then fucking do it,” Xiumin snarls. “Do it before I rip your throat out with my teeth.”

“Oh, don’t keep giving me reasons to wait,” Lu Han moans, dropping himself down a little, giving Xiumin access, and he feels Xiumin’s teeth in his throat, sinking in until it rips a scream out of him, until his body recoils of it’s own accord. Xiumin’s mouth is stained with blood, and his eyes are fierce and sharp.

Lu Han whines, leaning in, and kisses him, licking the blood out of his mouth. It’s thick and sharp and it makes Lu Han feel light-headed, especially when Xiumin bites at his tongue. Lu Han rocks his hips down hard into Xiumin’s and freezes, a smile twisting up his lips.

“Oh, that’s new,” he purrs, rutting down again. He’s hard; of course he is. But Xiumin is too, and that’s breathtaking, the way Xiumin feels under him. If he could take that much from Xiumin…

He remembers the threat he made, so long ago, back in the games and smiles.

“Don’t you dare, you sick bastard. I’ll bite it off, I swear to god,” Xiumin spits.

“Promises, promises.” Lu Han reaches down, still pinning Xiumin, fingers fumbling between them, sliding his hand into Xiumin’s pants. Xiumin snarls, ripping his nails down Lu Han’s skin, but he presses his hips up into Lu Han’s touch anyways, despite the protests. Lu Han moans. “That’s my good boy.”

“Don’t—,” Xiumin chokes out, but it tapers into a groan as Lu Han wraps his hand around his cock and tugs a few times before letting go, lifting his hand to his mouth and licking it, moaning at the taste of Xiumin on his fingers.

He lifts off of Xiumin, stumbling to his feet, and moves to the bed, taking a seat on it and cocking an eyebrow at Xiumin. He reaches over, grabbing the remote and flicking on the screen. They’re playing the deaths, over and over, and Lu Han smiles at the sight, looking back to Xiumin.

“Come on, love,” he purrs. “Don’t you want to get your revenge?”

Xiumin stands, sneering, mouth red and too wet, slick with Lu Han’s blood. He moves towards Lu Han quickly, and Lu Han expects him to drop onto the bed as well, but he does. He stands over Lu Han with something beautifully sharp in his eyes, the edge of all those broken pieces inside of him.

“I know you have a knife,” he says, “You always have a knife. Where is it?”

“Mmm,” Lu Han hums, amused, cocking his head at Xiumin. “You know me so well.”

Xiumin doesn’t say anything.

Eventually Lu Han sighs. “Don’t be boring, love,” he whines, a little frustrated, but he shimmies down his pants, stripping down to nothing to retrieve the knife from where it’s stashed against his thigh, hilt strapped to him. “You’re going to ruin the game too quickly.”

“This isn’t a fucking game,” Xiumin says, voice tight. “None of this. That hell we went through. All those murders. None of this was a game, no matter what they sell it as. You’re not a winner. You’re a pathetic bastard that they conned into believing he was something more than a trained psychopath.”

Lu Han frowns. “I’m a weapon,” he says, shrugging. “I didn’t want to win. I wanted to kill them. I want to kill you.”

“Then do it,” Xiumin snarls.

Lu Han grins. “Almost, love. You’re almost finished. I made you a promise once. I intend to fulfill it.”

He sets the knife aside; he has better ways to hurt Xiumin right now.

He tugs Xiumin down, twisting to settle on top of him again, and Xiumin fishes around for Lu Han’s knife. He holds it, more like a ward than anything, but he doesn’t stop Lu Han from tugging his pants off, leaving him bare beneath him. Xiumin’s less hard now, but Lu Han doesn’t mind. He leans down, sucking Xiumin into his mouth, pulling Xiumin inside of him.

Above him, Lu Han hears Xiumin choke on a sob, and he feels the knife take it’s place in Xiumin’s hand, sharp and steady, digging into Lu Han’s shoulders, his upper back. It hurts but only enough to feel good, and Lu Han moans around Xiumin’s cock, delighted to feel it hardening in his mouth. Xiumin sobs again, and Lu Han feels tears dripping onto him.

It’s gratifying, really, and Lu Han is pleased that he only has to reach up and run his fingers through his own injuries for enough blood to get his fingers wet. He slides them down into sacred places and presses them inside of Xiumin, one after the other, sucking hard on the head of Xiumin’s cock.

Xiumin sobs again, louder now, a kind of throaty keening noise that Lu Han appreciates. He finds out when he crooks his fingers right, Xiumin wails in something that’s not quite pain, but so very, very close.

He sits up, eventually, popping off of Xiumin’s cock with a wet sound, and pulls his fingers free, sitting up. The sting of the knife nicks him too hard with the movement, and Lu Han arches into it with a sigh. “Almost done,” he whispers, sweetly, like he would to a proper lover. “Xiumin.”

Xiumin shudders, eyes squeezing shut, and Lu Han sees the flicker of hesitation on his face, but when he opens his eyes again, they’re hard and steely. “Then do it, you sick son of a bitch. Get your fucking rocks off so you’ll finally kill me.”

“Oh, so close,” Lu Han purrs, reaching out for the remote he had set aside and turning the volume up and up until Xiumin can hear it, hear his lovers begging for their lives. Lu Han smiles like a shark. “But this isn’t about me getting off. I told you, didn’t I? That I’d fuck you while you watched them die? That you’d be so immune to it that you could come while watching me kill them?”

Xiumin blanches, going pale, but Lu Han only beams and leans in. “Don’t worry. We have time. I’ll get you there.”

And he does. He pushes inside of Xiumin slowly, listening to him whimper with fear and pain and something else, but Xiumin shoves back against him hard, reaching up and setting his fingers in the cuts he’s just made on Lu Han’s shoulders, digging in and in and ripping the cuts wider. Lu Han moans and fucks into him hard, fast, rough enough to make Xiumin scream.

He keeps screaming, but at some point, Lu Han finds that angle he’d crooked his fingers at, and Xiumin’s screams shake with every thrust, his nails tearing, gouging. Lu Han will need hundreds of stitches after this, and the thought makes him fuck into Xiumin harder, faster, his hand coming down to work at Xiumin’s cock.

In the background, behind Xiumin’s screaming, Lu Han hears so many deaths. It isn’t until he finds the one he wants that he pauses, just for a moment, letting Xiumin hear the sound of Jongin’s head being crushed, the sound of a skull being bashed in, wet and thick, and then Tao’s voice.

Lu Han fucks in, harder, sharper, fingers curling around Xiumin’s cock so hard it must ache, and Xiumin comes with a broken sob as, on the screen, Tao whimpers, “ _ ge. _ ”

Xiumin folds in on himself, a massacre of something that once resembled a human being, and Lu Han comes with a gasp, hot and wet inside of Xiumin. He’ll be there forever now, he thinks, gleefully. He slides out, a smile on his lips. “I love you,” he breathes like a prayer, kissing Xiumin.

Xiumin looks up at him, and whatever edge there was has been filed to a point, the focus in his eyes almost serene behind the madness. Xiumin grabs the knife, twisting upwards, bringing it towards Lu Han so sloppily that Lu Han knows there’s nothing rational left inside this boy.

He laughs. “Cute,” he decides, catching the knife, the cut across his palm worth it for the monstrous one-note wail of rage Xiumin lets out.

Lu Han pulls it from his fingers and shoves Xiumin back onto the bed, straddling him. The knife comes down, hard and fast and sickening, a thud into Xiumin’s chest, all the way to the hilt. Xiumin makes a noise like someone’s punched him, but wetter, and then he doesn’t make a noise at all.

Lu Han takes his time to crack Xiumin’s chest open, pulling open the ribcage like it should unfold naturally and ignoring the sickening snaps on the way. He reaches in, stroking Xiumin’s still heart with gentle fingers.

After a moment, he bends down and licks it.

It’s nothing special, really. That’s a little annoying.

—-

It’s an hour, maybe, before Chanyeol comes in, and Lu Han looks up with a smile, slightly dazed. He’s been watching the deaths on TV for a bit now, waiting for his handler to come, and he smiles when Chanyeol enters, peeling himself from the bed.

He tosses himself into Chanyeol’s arms, and Chanyeol catches him despite the amount of blood that coats Lu Han’s thin frame. Of course he does.

Lu Han smiles and nuzzles at him. “I killed him,” he breaths, gesturing proudly to the body behind him on the bed. “I did it, Channie. I killed him.”

Xiumin is hardly human-looking anymore. He’s broken open, broken apart. There’s come dried on his belly. His face is contorted in death, a madness set into the lines around his eyes, still eerily open and staring into the far distance.

Chanyeol hopes, despite that, that the poor boy found some peace. If there is an afterlife, he hopes Xiumin is with all the other poor souls Lu Han took from him for some sick sense of delight in hurting him.

For now, Chanyeol nods, stroking down Lu Han’s spine gently, the way he always has. There are injuries that Chanyeol can feel, ones that make Lu Han shiver in his arms, keening a little.

“I know you did,” he murmurs to Lu Han, pressing his mouth into Lu Han’s hair to speak, a mockery of a kiss. “I know. Good job. You did it.”

He pulls back, just a little, petting Lu Han’s hair away from his face. Lu Han smiles up at him beautifully, childishly. God help him.

“You’re all done now,” Chanyeol whispers. Lu Han’s knife is close, as always, and it slides so easily between Lu Han’s ribs, Lu Han still staring up at him in search of approval. His face hardly even has time to shutter into something like betrayal. He breathes out something like a moan, but Chanyeol can’t tell if it was genuine pain or whatever else Lu Han’s brain twisted it into.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, and realizes he’s crying. He pulls the knife out again and lets it fall. “Lu Han, I’m so sorry.”

He knows. He knows it was all he could possibly have done. Lu Han would never have been more than this. Lu Han would have been a killer put in a place where he was no longer allowed to kill. It’s better this way.

It still hurts.

He looks back at Xiumin on the bed, and gently lowers Lu Han into place beside him. It’s more fitting, he thinks.

Chanyeol goes to wash the blood off of himself and gets ready to go home.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry.
> 
> Imported from [tumblr](http://taeminuet.tumblr.com).


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